Again, the author is in no doubt that, in the quarrel between post-revolutionary Cuba and the US, it was Cuba that started it. But he does not give us an inkling of a clue as to whether he thinks that the exchange of the Unites States for the Soviet Union as Cuba's sponsor was wise or in the long-term interest of the country.

Where the biography is good is in explaining the shifting nature of the relationship between Castro and Guevara. If Guevara, a disorganised and drifting bohemian of radical views, had never met Castro he would probably never have been heard of. Castro, on the other hand, was the kind of man who would have made a great noise in the world anyway.

Having discovered his metier as a guerrilla fighter, however, Guevara for a time almost eclipsed Castro in the popular imagination, both in Cuba and abroad. His startling victory, which more or less ended the revolutionary war at the Battle of Santa Clara, made him the most visible of the revolutionary leaders; but once the revolution had triumphed Guevara, with his uncompromising and loudly-expressed quasi-Trotskyite or Maoist view of the need for world revolution, increasingly became a nuisance to Castro, who needed to cultivate good relations with the Soviets, who in turn were anxious to appear moderate to the Americans.

Nevertheless, Castro was not at heart moderate, even if he had for a time to appear to be one for purely pragmatic reasons. According to the author, the perfect solution to his dilemma was to allow Guevara to leave Cuba and try to foment revolution abroad. The author does not discuss the persistent rumours that Castro knowingly shipped off Guevara to his death; for Guevara dead was far more use to him than Guevara living.

I, personally, am not susceptible to the romance of these two figures, and there is nothing in this book to cause me to change my views. To overthrow one dictatorship in order to institute another, incomparably more thoroughgoing dictatorship, seems less than admirable to me, even if brought about by acts of the utmost daring. Castro and Guevara were both monstrously egotistical, and a cause is not good in proportion to the lengths people are prepared to go to promote it. This is a pretty elementary lesson, but one that even now has not been drawn, certainly not in this book.