Travels without My Aunt: In the Footsteps of Graham Greene

The settings for Graham Greene's books remain some of the most intriguing and resonant locations on earth: rich in atmosphere, laden with history and often mired in conflict. Having made a journey to Haiti in 1997, and read Greene's portrait of this unique, strange, island in "The Comedians", Julia Llewellyn Smith decided to make further trips to the other locations he wrote about in his books, often the most neglected and troubled parts of the world. Following in Greene's footsteps, she travelled to places as diverse as Spain, Vietnam and Cuba to see how the passing of time had affected the places brought so vividly to life in his books; and to see whether or not the countries he evoked remained beneath any veneer of change. She was frequently confronted by extreme danger, not least because, as a young woman often travelling on her own, she would nonetheless always try to reach the heart of the places she travelled to. From voodoo ceremonies and gunshots after dark in Haiti, to conversations with child killers in Sierra Leone during a brief lull in that country's bloody civil war, or a bizarre dinner with a Rockefeller socialite in Buenos Aires, each journey, it seemed, took on a life of its own.