'Our Man in Havana’ on radio tonight

Press, 16 July 1982, Page 11

'Our Man in Havana’ on radio tonight

Graham Greene's comedy spy thriller. “Our Man in Havana," has been dramatised for radio by the 8.8. C. The author got his idea for a secret agent sending completely erroneous reports from entirely imaginary agents from events he observed in Libson working there in 1943-44 and noting the activities of the German Abwehr there. “Our man in Havana" is a mild-mannered Englishman earning a precarious living selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba in 1957. Separated from his wife, he has a precocious 17-year-old daughter with expensive tastes. Then a man from British Intelligence solicits Wormold’s help as a British agent and Wormold becomes “our man in Havana.” With the notorious captain of the police department infatuated with Wormold's daughter, it would seem he is in a good position to obtain informa-

tion and feed it back to the Foreign Office. But Wormold has not a clue how. to go about recruiting other agents to build a spy network. He consults his old German friend, Dr Hasselbacher, who suggests a simple solution — he must invent the information, invent the agents, invent everything. In that way he can maintain complete secrecy and prevent anyone from finding out that it is all a lie. "Our man in Havana” can be heard on the radio National programme, starting at 8.45 p.m. tonight. Forest lore Tawhao Tioke holds the forest in respect, and no wonder, because his boyhood was spent in the rugged Urewera district. There he learned the forest lore of the Tuhoe people — the medicinal use of plants, the gathering of food in the bush; the conservation essential to the