Cuba

What Washington was like during the Cuban Missile Crisis (2002)

12 October 2022 7:00 pm

On 27 October 1962, US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara stepped out of crisis meetings and looked up at the sky.…

Portrait of the week: Mixed messages on masks, protests in Cuba and good news for pandas

17 July 2021 9:00 am

Home England expects everyone to wear masks in crowded places, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a televised address,…

Cuba libre: why Cubans have reached breaking point

17 July 2021 9:00 am

Havana There is an astonishing patience in the Cuban people, born of endless waiting. When a store has, say, chicken,…

Why are Labour MPs excusing Cuba’s authoritarian regime?

16 July 2021 2:37 am

Thousands have taken to the streets in Cuba this week to protest against the authoritarian government that rules over them.…

Could street protests finally topple Cuba's communist regime?

14 July 2021 8:33 am

Could the growing tide of protests finally topple Cuba’s communist government? Many Cubans are certainly angry: Sunday marked the largest-ever demonstration against…

How the third world war was narrowly averted

8 May 2021 9:00 am

Nuclear weapons carry a payload of cold logic: if both sides have them, neither will ever use them. But in…

The creators of Breeders are locked into a game of How Far Can You Go

14 March 2020 9:00 am

Sky One’s Breeders (Thursday) bills itself as an ‘honest and uncompromising comedy’ about parenting. To this end, the opening scene…

At the Tropicana nightclub: Dr Hasselbacher and Wormald celebrate with Milly on her 17th birthday. A scene from Carol Reed’s film of Our Man in Havana with Burl Ives, Alec Guinness and Jo Morrow

‘Where every vice was permissible’: Graham Greene’s Cuba

6 April 2019 9:00 am

Cuba meant a lot to Graham Greene. Behind his writing desk in his flat in Antibes he had a painting…

Papa and his muse in Cuba

The old man and his muse: Hemingway’s toe-curling infatuation with Adriana Ivancich

1 September 2018 9:00 am

One rainy evening in December 1948, a blue Buick emerged from the darkness of the Venetian lagoon near the village…

A child freedom fighter in Budapest, 1956

1956: the year of living dangerously

13 February 2016 9:00 am

The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…

Fascinating, sexy, improbably compelling and scathingly funny: The Big Short reviewed

23 January 2016 9:00 am

The Big Short is a drama about the American financial collapse of 2008. It talks you through sub-prime mortgages, tranches,…

Ruben Gonzalez (Photo: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty)

The band that nearly saved the Cuban revolution

8 August 2015 9:00 am

By chance, my first night in Havana in 1987 was the night the clubs went dark to mark the death…

Portrait of the week

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Home Parents would be able to have their children’s passports removed if they were suspected of planning to travel abroad…

From ambrosia to zabaglione — now with added slavery

13 June 2015 9:00 am

This Oxford Companion ranges from the sweet to the decidedly salty, while being the most politically correct reference book you will ever consult, says Paul Levy

Portrait of the week

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, soon got used to the surprise of the Conservatives being returned in the general…

Letter from Cuba: The tourists are coming – but don’t expect Walmart just yet

4 April 2015 9:00 am

Sloppy Joe’s — which starred in the film of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana — was always likely to…

Both Belgium and the United States should be called to account for the death of Patrice Lumumba

7 March 2015 9:00 am

For decades, all the outside world knew was that Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader, had been done away with.…

What a lost prison manuscript reveals about the real Nelson Mandela

18 January 2014 9:00 am

His long-lost prison manuscript sheds new light on the president’s politics, smoothed over in ‘Long Walk to Freedom’

Alexander Chancellor: The Chinese must save the cigar from extinction

11 January 2014 9:00 am

In Dorchester during the Christmas holiday I bought a two-slice electric toaster at Currys. It was a nice little toaster…

Carlos Acosta, the great dancer, should be a full-time novelist

2 November 2013 9:00 am

Carlos Acosta, the greatest dancer of his generation, grew up in Havana as the youngest of 11 black children. Money…