‘IN A NOTE DATED 3 June 1954, the Belgian Ambassador in London conveyed an invitation to Her Majesty’s Government of Great Britain: an invitation to take part in a new World’s Fair, which the Belgians were calling the “Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles 1958”.’ Thus begins Jonathan Coe’s novel Expo 58, the most surprising legacy of the first World’s Fair since New York’s in 1939/40, and the first to be held after World War Two.
The exposition opened in April