Write Angles

Books, booze, broads and billfish - not necessarily in that order - were central to Ernest Hemingway's way of life. A constant supply of each was available to the Nobel prize-winning author in Cuba, the Caribbean island where he felt most at home.

Hemingway was machismo personified, roaming war zones and exotic destinations in search of prey, perspective and like-minded people. In 1939, after shuttling between his home in Key West, Florida and a hotel room in Havana (where he could write in relative peace), Hemingway and his soon-to-be third wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, rented a single-storey colonial house set in large grounds in the quiet suburb of San Francisco de Paula, about 12 kms southeast of Old Havana.

The following year, they bought it for US$18,000, reportedly with royalties from For Whom the Bell Tolls. The hilltop house, named Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm), was built in 1886 and surrounded by 10 acres of gardens with a long, tree-lined driveway and views of Havana in the distance.