When Ernest Hemingway survived a plane crash in Uganda in 1954, he was able to read his own obituaries. A similar diversion may await Fidel Castro, the ailing Cuban leader, who has not been seen in public since mid-2006. This week the state organ Granma published a letter of resignation under Mr Castro’s name. It ceded power to his brother Raúl. The news has disgorged thousands of column-inches that had been stored up on the assumption that only death would end the iron rule that Fidel has exercised since 1959.

The passing of his regime seems less epochal than the retirement of Mr Castro himself. In an era when politicians build résumés, he had exploits. The Moncada Barracks, the Sierra Maestra, the Playa Girón ... for a generation, otherwise indifferent people in countries far more important than Cuba knew these places and what they stood for. You could imagine Schiller writing a dramatic poem called Fidel Castro. “Hero” is the only word to describe his status in the eyes of most political radicals for the past half-century. What, if anything, did this heroism amount to?