The film was never made, and Greene soon realised that Havana – which he had visited several times in the early 1950s – would be a much better setting, the absurdities of the Cold War being more appropriate for a comedy. Remembering the German agents in Portugal, Greene wrote the first version of the story in 1946, as an outline for a film script, with the story set in Estonia in 1938. Garbo was the main inspiration for Wormold, (Bramble in the Opera) the protagonist of Our Man In Havana. In fact he invented armed forces movements and operations from maps, guides and standard military references.

Greene joined MI6 in August 1941. In London, Greene had been appointed to the subsection dealing with counter-espionage in the Iberian peninsula, where he had learned about German agents in Portugal sending the Germans fictitious reports which garnered them expenses and bonuses to add to their basic salary. One of these agents was ' Garbo', a Spanish double agent in Lisbon, who gave his German handlers disinformation, by pretending to control a ring of agents all over England. The book predates the Cuban Missile Crisis, but certain aspects of the plot, notably the role of missile installations, appear to anticipate the events of 1962. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1959, directed by Carol Reed and starring Alec Guinness in 1963 it was adapted into an opera by Malcolm Williamson, to a libretto by Sidney Gilliat, who had worked on the film.

He makes fun of intelligence services, especially the British MI6, and their willingness to believe reports from their local informants. Our Man In Havana (1958) is a novel set in Cuba by the British author Graham Greene.

Our man in havana by graham greene