Nicholas Shakespeare

Sun, sea and spooks

Greene’s brother, as well as Agent Garbo, provided comic inspiration for the vacuum-cleaner salesman recruited by SIS in Our Man in Havana

issue 06 April 2019

  • Our Man Down in Havana: The Story Behind Graham Greene’s Cold War Spy Novel

    Christopher Hull

    Pegasus, pp. 352

Cuba meant a lot to Graham Greene. Behind his writing desk in his flat in Antibes he had a painting by the Cuban artist René Portocarrero, presented to him by Fidel Castro, who had signed his name on the back, so that Greene didn’t know which way to hang it.

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