Greatest Love Story Ever Told

I mainly interview actors and other public figures, but now and then I do a story that hasn’t been told a million times before. This one ran in the Guardian Weekend mag’s Valentine’s issue and is the most memorable story I’ve worked on in ages. It’s about a couple who fell in love as teenagers, didn’t see each other for 30 years, then met again in a different country and in totally different circumstances and…

Edmundo Desnoes and Felicia Rosshandler met at a party in an old colonial house in Havana. They were 15 years old, Desnoes the son of a Cuban father and Jamaican mother, Rosshandler a relatively new arrival from Europe, where her family had fled Nazi-occupied Belgium.

In the movie version of this story – although it needs very little in the way of gilding – each would remember what the other was wearing. What they remember is this: the house had a large, tiled veranda; there was a Victrola playing American music – Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. Desnoes was not a great one for dancing – “He’s the only Cuban who doesn’t like to dance!” – says Rosshandler. And so the teenagers sat and talked…

The whole piece is here