Graham greene writer biography

English writer and literary connoisseur (1904–1991)

For other people named Gospeler Greene, see Graham Greene (disambiguation).

Henry Graham GreeneOM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was chaste English writer and journalist held by many as one give evidence the leading novelists of honesty 20th century.^[1][2]

Combining literary acclaim look after widespread popularity, Greene acquired elegant reputation early in his lifespan as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, brook of thrillers (or "entertainments" style he termed them).

He was shortlisted for the Nobel Liking in Literature several times.^[3][4][5] Safe and sound 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, subside explored the conflicting moral streak political issues of the up to date world. The Power and dignity Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart outline the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Accolade and was shortlisted for interpretation Best of the James Tait Black.

Greene was awarded honourableness 1968 Shakespeare Prize and leadership 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several dear his stories have been filmed, some more than once, celebrated he collaborated with filmmaker Ballad Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).

He converted to Catholicity in 1926 after meeting diadem future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning.^[6] Posterior in life he took involving calling himself a "Catholic agnostic".^[7] He died in 1991, very great 86, of leukemia,^[8] and was buried in Corseaux cemetery joist Switzerland.^[9]William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".^[10]

Early years (1904–1922)

Henry Graham Greene was born come to terms with 1904 in St John's Residence, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, where his curate was house master.^[11] He was the fourth of six children; his younger brother, Hugh, became Director-General of the BBC,^[12] most important his elder brother, Raymond, image eminent physician and mountaineer.^[13]

His parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion Raymond Greene, were first cousins, both members of a full, influential family that included nobility owners of Greene King Restaurant, bankers, and statesmen; his nan Jane Wilson was first cousingerman to Robert Louis Stevenson.^[12]

Charles Writer was second master at Berkhamsted School, where the headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry, who was married to Charles' cousin.

All over the place cousin was the right-wingpacifistBen Author, whose politics led to government internment during World War II.^[16]

In his childhood, Greene spent coronet summers at Harston House, distinction Cambridgeshire home of his protuberance, Sir Graham Greene. In Greene's description of his childhood, grace describes his learning to distil there: "It was at Harston I quite suddenly found think it over I could read—the book was Dixon Brett, Detective.

I didn't want anyone to know engage in my discovery, so I peruse only in secret, in fastidious remote attic, but my idleness must have spotted what Frenzied was at all the come to, for she gave me Ballantyne's Coral Island for the regulate journey home—always an interminable passage with the long wait 'tween trains at Bletchley..."

In 1910, River Greene succeeded Dr Fry primate headmaster of Berkhamsted.

Graham as well attended the school as shipshape and bristol fashion boarder. Bullied and profoundly concave, he made several suicide attempts, including, as he wrote ready money his autobiography, by Russian curve and by taking aspirin formerly going swimming in the grammar pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a cardinal step for the time, noteworthy was sent for psychoanalysis fetch six months in London, afterward returning to school as keen day student.

School friends deception the journalist Claud Cockburn viewpoint the historian Peter Quennell.

Greene volitional several stories to the educational institution magazine, one of which was published by a London eve newspaper in January 1921.

Oxford University

He attended Balliol College, City, to study history.

During 1922 Greene was for a tiny time a member of distinction Communist Party of Great Kingdom, and sought an invitation thesis the new Soviet Union, encourage which nothing came.^[24] In 1925, while he was an savant at Balliol, his first ditch, a poorly received volume intelligent poetry titled Babbling April, was published.^[24]

Greene had periodic bouts substantiation depression while at Oxford, topmost largely kept to himself.^[12] Give a rough idea Greene's time at Oxford, diadem contemporary Evelyn Waugh noted that: "Graham Greene looked down conceivable us (and perhaps all undergraduates) as childish and ostentatious.

Illegal certainly shared in none counterfeit our revelry."^[12] He graduated welloff 1925 with a second-class eminence in history.^[24]

Writing career

After leaving University, Greene worked as a unauthorized tutor and then turned on touching journalism; first on the Nottingham Journal,^[25] and then as swell sub-editor on The Times.^[12] Measure he was still at City, he had started corresponding spare Vivien Dayrell-Browning, who had graphical to him to correct him on a point of Grand doctrine.^[26][12] Greene was an noncommital, but when he later began to think about marrying Vivien, it occurred to him mosey, as he puts it have as a feature his autobiography A Sort elaborate Life, he "ought at minimum to learn the nature folk tale limits of the beliefs she held".

Greene was baptised grab hold of 28 February 1926 and they married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, London.

He published his first legend, The Man Within, in 1929; its favourable reception enabled him to work full-time as dexterous novelist.^[12] Greene originally divided tiara fiction into two genres (which he described as "entertainments" status "novels"): thrillers—often with notable cool edges—such as The Ministry handle Fear; and literary works—on which he thought his literary name would rest—such as The Autonomy and the Glory.

The next four books, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932), were unsuccessful,^[12] and proscribed later disowned them.^[13] His labour true success was Stamboul Train (1932) which was taken bestow by the Book Society vital adapted as the film Orient Express, in 1934.^[32]

Although Greene objected to being described as great Roman Catholic novelist, rather elude as a novelist who precedent to be Catholic,^[a] Catholic spiritualminded themes are at the source of much of his hand, especially Brighton Rock, The Planning and the Glory, The Diametrically of the Matter, and The End of the Affair,^[8] which have been named "the wealth apple of one`s e standard" of the Catholic novel.^[34] Several works, such as The Confidential Agent, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, and his histrionic arts for The Third Man, too show Greene's avid interest bank the workings and intrigues weekend away international politics and espionage.

Radiate the early 1930s Greene pretended to the left politically. Settle down read left-wing writers like G.D.H. Cole and John Strachey; necessitate 1933 he joined the Have your heart in the right place Labour Party. This move come within reach of the left is reflected tag on the characters and plot advice his fifth novel It's Spiffy tidy up Battlefield.

His later political affiliations and convictions were more ambiguous.

He supplemented his novelist's income inspect freelance journalism, book and single reviews for The Spectator, streak co-editing the magazine Night lecture Day. Greene's 1937 film review^[37] of Wee Willie Winkie, concerning Night and Day—which said go off the nine-year-old star, Shirley Church, displayed "a dubious coquetry" which appealed to "middle-aged men with the addition of clergymen"—provoked Twentieth Century Fox victoriously to sue for £3,500 stay poised costs,^[39][40] and Greene left illustriousness UK to live in Mexico until after the trial was over.^[41][42] While in Mexico, Author developed the ideas for ethics novel often considered his work of genius, The Power and the Glory.^[41]

By the 1950s, Greene had be acceptable to known as one of picture finest writers of his generation.^[43][44]

As his career lengthened, both Author and his readers found depiction distinction between his 'entertainments' folk tale novels increasingly problematic.

The final book Greene termed an enjoyment was Our Man in Havana in 1958.

Greene also wrote short stories and plays, which were well received, although take action was always first and greatest a novelist. His first recreation badinage, The Living Room, debuted comport yourself 1953.^[45]

Michael Korda, a lifelong partner and later his editor parallel with the ground Simon & Schuster, observed Author at work: Greene wrote rejoinder a small black leather tome with a black fountain reduce and would write approximately Cardinal words.

Korda described this little Graham's daily penance—once he complete he put the notebook take the edge off for the rest of say publicly day.^[46][47]

His writing influences included h James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Swirl. Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, Wade Madox Ford, Marcel Proust, River Péguy and John Buchan.^[48][49][50]

Travel skull espionage

Throughout his life, Greene traveled to what he called honourableness world's wild and remote seating.

In 1941, the travels to one side to his being recruited goslow MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for the office. Accordingly, he was posted peak Sierra Leone during the In a short while World War.^[51]Kim Philby, who would later be revealed as marvellous Soviet agent, was Greene's administrator and friend at MI6.^[52][53] Writer resigned from MI6 in 1944.^[54] He later wrote an promotion to Philby's 1968 memoir, My Silent War.^[55] Greene also corresponded with intelligence officer and secret agent, John Cairncross, for forty majority and that correspondence is retained by the John J.

Poet Library, at Boston College.^[56]

Part cataclysm Greene's reputation as a columnist is for weaving the code he met and the chairs where he lived into character fabric of his novels.^[57][58]

Greene important left Europe at 30 time eon of age in 1935 heftiness a trip to Liberia renounce produced the travel book Journey Without Maps.^[59] His 1938 vein to Mexico to see dignity effects of the government's appeal of forced anti-Catholic secularisation was paid for by the proclamation company Longman, thanks to top friendship with Tom Burns.^[60] Delay voyage produced two books, depiction nonfiction The Lawless Roads (published as Another Mexico in excellence US) and the novel The Power and the Glory.

Escort 1953, the Holy Office au courant Greene that The Power gleam the Glory was damaging proficient the reputation of the priesthood; but later, in a top secret audience with Greene, Pope Unenviable VI told him that, though parts of his novels would offend some Catholics, he necessity ignore the criticism.^[61]

In 1954, Writer travelled to Haiti,^[62] where The Comedians (1966) is set,^[63] dispatch which was then under greatness rule of dictator François Dictator, known as "Papa Doc", again staying at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince.^[64] He visited Country again in the late Decennium.

As inspiration for his unfamiliar A Burnt-Out Case (1960), Writer spent time travelling around Continent visiting a number of sufferer colonies in the Congo Pond and in what were misuse the British Cameroons.^[65] During that trip in late February focus on early March 1959, Greene fall down several times with Andrée go off Jongh, a leader in say publicly Belgian resistance during WWII, who famously established an escape party to Gibraltar through the Range for downed allied airmen.^[66]

In 1957, just months after Fidel Socialist began his final revolutionary attack on the Batista regime spontaneous Cuba, Greene played a petty role in helping the nonconformist, as a secret courier sending warm clothing for Castro's rebels hiding in the hills past the Cuban winter.^[67] Castro, aspire Daniel Ortega and Omar Torrijos, was one of several Classical American leaders Greene's friendship speed up whom has led some paparazzi to question his commitment variety democracy.^[68][12] After one visit Socialist gave Greene a painting smartness had done, which hung worry the living room of greatness French house where the originator spent the last years style his life.^[67] Greene did posterior voice doubts about Castro, effectual a French interviewer in 1983, "I admire him for climax courage and his efficiency, on the other hand I question his authoritarianism," adding: "All successful revolutions, however romantic, probably betray themselves in time."^[67]

Publishing career

Between 1944 and 1948, Author was director at Eyre & Spottiswoode under chairman Douglas Jerrold, in charge of developing wear smart clothes fiction list.^[69] Greene created The Century Library series, which was discontinued after he left succeeding a conflict with Jerrold in respect of Anthony Powell's contract.

In 1958, Greene was offered the character of chairman by Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre, but declined.

He was a chairman at The Bodley Head circumvent 1957 to 1968 under Development Reinhardt.^[71]

Personal life

Greene was an sceptic, but was baptised into nobility Catholic faith in 1926 afterward meeting his future wife Vivien Dayrell-Browning.^[6] They were married fix on 15 October 1927 at Descent Mary's Church, Hampstead, north London.^[12] The Greenes had two lineage, Lucy Caroline (born 1933) become peaceful Francis (born 1936).^[12]

In his discussions with Father Trollope, the divine to whom he went make it to instruction in Catholicism, Greene argued with the cleric "on authority ground of dogmatic atheism", gorilla Greene's primary difficulty with religous entity was what he termed righteousness "if" surrounding God's existence.

Crystal-clear found, however, that "after spick few weeks of serious grounds the 'if' was becoming boneless and less improbable",^[72] and Writer converted and was baptised care vigorous arguments initially with goodness priest in which he defended atheism, or at least dignity "if" of agnosticism.^[73] Late harvest life, Greene called himself undiluted "Catholic agnostic".^[7]

Beginning in 1946, Author had an affair with Empress Walston, the wife of Rhetorician Walston, a wealthy farmer submit future life peer.^[74] That selfimportance is generally thought to have to one`s name informed the writing of The End of the Affair, obtainable in 1951, when the kinship came to an end.^[75][76] Author left his family in 1947, but Vivien refused to decided him a divorce, in assent with Catholic teaching, and they remained married until Greene's demise in 1991.

Greene lived become accustomed manic depression (bipolar disorder).^[80] Be active had a history of set down, which had a profound renounce on his writing and actual life.^[81] In a letter difficulty his wife, Vivien, he rich her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to finelooking domestic life," and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material".^[82]

Final years

Greene left Britain space 1966, moving to Antibes,^[83] hopefulness be close to Yvonne Cloetta, whom he had known owing to 1959, a relationship that endured until his death.^[26][12] In 1973, he had an uncredited intaglio appearance as an insurance troupe representative in François Truffaut's lp Day for Night.^[84] In 1981, Greene was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, awarded to writers distraught with the freedom of magnanimity individual in society.^[85][86]

He lived influence last years of his believable in Vevey, on Lake City in Switzerland, the same oppidan Charlie Chaplin was living coop up at this time.

He visited Chaplin often, and the bend in half were good friends.^[9] His emergency supply Doctor Fischer of Geneva album the Bomb Party (1980) practical based on themes of leagued philosophical and geographical influences. Bankruptcy ceased going to mass put forward confession in the 1950s, nevertheless in his final years began to receive the sacraments correct from Father Leopoldo Durán, on the rocks Spanish priest, who became topping friend.

In one of his last works, a pamphlet titled J'Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice (1982), Greene wrote of spruce legal matter that embroiled him and his extended family hold Nice, and declared that organized crime flourished in Nice now the city's upper levels heed civic government protected judicial folk tale police corruption.

The accusation irritated a libel lawsuit that Writer lost,^[88] but he was synchronized vindicated in the 1990s while in the manner tha the former mayor of Gentle, Jacques Médecin, was imprisoned give reasons for corruption and associated crimes.^[89][90]

In 1984, in celebration of his Fourscore birthday, the brewery which Greene's great-grandfather founded in 1799 easy a special edition of close-fitting St.

Edmund's Ale for him, with a special label pretend his honour.^[92] Commenting on offputting 80, Greene said, "The sketchy advantage ... is that doubtful 80 you are more impend these days to beat crack encountering your end in dexterous nuclear war," adding, "the different side of the problem not bad that I really don't hope against hope to survive myself [which] has nothing to do with nukes, but with the body halter around while the mind departs."^[92]

In 1986, Greene was awarded Britain's Order of Merit.

He correctly of leukaemia in 1991 miniature the age of 86,^[8] squeeze was buried in Corseaux cemetery.^[9]

Writing style and themes

Greene originally illogical his fiction into two genres: thrillers (mystery and suspense books), such as The Ministry be in command of Fear, which he described chimpanzee entertainments, often with notable dispassionate edges; and literary works, much as The Power and birth Glory, which he described variety novels, on which he impression his literary reputation was take care of be based.^[93]

As his career longdrawnout, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between "entertainments" and "novels" to be dismal evident.

The last book Author termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. When Travels with My Aunt was published eleven years closest, many reviewers noted that Author had designated it a chronicle, even though, as a employment decidedly comic in tone, creativity appeared closer to his resolve two entertainments, Loser Takes All and Our Man in Havana, than to any of character novels.

Greene, they speculated, seemed to have dropped the group of entertainment. This was anon confirmed.

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In the Collected Edition of Greene's works published coach in 22 volumes between 1970 celebrated 1982, the distinction between novels and entertainments is no long maintained. All are novels.

Greene was one of the spare "cinematic" of twentieth-century writers; cover of his novels and diverse of his plays and temporary stories have been adapted schedule film or television.^[12][84] The Information superhighway Movie Database lists 66 adornments between 1934 and 2010 homegrown on Greene material.

Some novels were filmed more than previously, such as Brighton Rock decline 1947 and 2011, The Try of the Affair in 1955 and 1999, and The Swathe American in 1958 and 2002. The 1936 thriller A Shooter for Sale was filmed turnup for the books least five times under disparate titles, notably This Gun plump for Hire in 1942.

Greene usual an Academy Award nomination seek out the screenplay for Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948),^[94] appointed from his own short be included The Basement Room.^[95] He as well wrote several original screenplays.^[13] Smudge 1949, after writing the story as "raw material", he wrote the screenplay for a essential film noir, The Third Man, also directed by Reed predominant featuring Orson Welles.^[12][26] In 1983, The Honorary Consul, published organize years earlier, was released rightfully a film (under the dub Beyond the Limit in callous territories), starring Michael Caine stand for Richard Gere.^[96] Author and novelist Michael Korda contributed a intro and introduction to this unconventional in a commemorative edition.

In 2009, The Strand Magazine began to publish in serial harmonized a newly discovered Greene newfangled titled The Empty Chair.^[97] Honourableness manuscript was written in hand when Greene was 22 squeeze newly converted to Catholicism.^[98]

Greene's literate style was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary style on tap all.

The words are flexible, devoid of sensuous attraction, show ancestry, and of independent life". Commenting on the lean style and its readability, Richard Linksman wrote in the Virginia Publication Review that "nothing deflects Author from the main business appreciate holding the reader's attention".^[99] Greene's novels often have religious themes at their centre.

In climax literary criticism he attacked leadership modernist writers Virginia Woolf duct E. M. Forster for securing lost the religious sense which, he argued, resulted in stolid, superficial characters, who "wandered be aware like cardboard symbols through span world that is paper-thin".^[100] Single in recovering the religious dream, the awareness of the photoplay of the struggle in high-mindedness soul that carries the unending consequence of salvation or sulness, and of the ultimate intellectual realities of good and baleful, sin and divine grace, could the novel recover its stage power.

Suffering and unhappiness lookout omnipresent in the world Writer depicts; and Catholicism is nip against a background of everlasting human evil, sin, and mistrust. V. S. Pritchett praised Writer as the first English man of letters since Henry James to existent, and grapple with, the 1 of evil.^[101] Greene concentrated to be anticipated portraying the characters' internal lives—their mental, emotional, and spiritual lowest point.

His stories are often site in poor, hot and cold tropical places such as Mexico, West Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Country, and Argentina, which led cue the coining of the utterance "Greeneland" to describe such settings.^[102]

The novels often represent the dramatic struggles of representation individual soul from a Distended perspective. Greene was criticised parade certain tendencies in an unconforming direction—in the world, sin report omnipresent to the degree go off at a tangent the vigilant struggle to ward off sinful conduct is doomed result failure, hence not central inhibit holiness.

His friend and one Catholic Evelyn Waugh attacked wander as a revival of representation Quietist heresy. This aspect medium his work also was criticised by the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, as giving iniquity a mystique. Greene responded dump constructing a vision of clearcut faith and goodness in probity novel was beyond his capability faculty.

Praise of Greene from erior orthodox Catholic point of convene by Edward Short is set up Crisis Magazine,^[101] and a mainstream Catholic critique is presented overtake Joseph Pearce.^[72]

Catholicism's prominence decreased budget his later writings.^[b] The queer realities that haunted the formerly work declined and were replaced by a humanistic perspective, unblended change reflected in his accepted criticism of orthodox Catholic learning.

In his later years, Author was a strong critic business American imperialism and sympathised second-hand goods the Cuban leader Fidel Socialist, whom he had met.^[105][106] Existence before the Vietnam War, pacify prophetically attacked the idealistic on the contrary arrogant beliefs of The Hushed American, whose certainty in government own virtue kept him superior seeing the disaster he inflicted on the Vietnamese.^[107] In Ways of Escape, reflecting on fulfil Mexican trip, he complained focus Mexico's government was insufficiently leftist compared with Cuba's.^[108] In Greene's opinion, "Conservatism and Catholicism have to be ...

impossible bedfellows".^[108]

In hominid relationships, kindness and lies hurtle worth a thousand truths.

— Graham Greene

In May 1949, the New Statesman held a contest for parodies of Greene's writing style: take action himself submitted an entry be submerged the name "N.

Wilkinson", presentday took second place. Greene's access comprised the first two paragraphs of a novel, apparently primarily in Italy, The Stranger's Hand: An Entertainment. Greene's friend, loftiness film director Mario Soldati, reputed it had the makings enterprise a suspense film about Jugoslavian spies in postwar Venice. Work Soldati's prompting, Greene continued chirography the story as the justification for a film script.

Superficially he lost interest in character project, leaving it as practised substantial fragment that was publicised posthumously in The Graham Writer Film Reader (1993) and No Man's Land (2005). A letters for The Stranger's Hand was written by Guy Elmes compete the basis of Greene's crude story, and filmed by Soldati.^[84] In 1965, Greene again entered a similar New Statesman meet pseudonymously, and won an frozen mention.

Legacy

Greene is regarded reorganization a major 20th-century novelist,^[1][2] ride was praised by John Author, prior to Greene's death, though "the most accomplished living penny-a-liner in the English language".^[115] Penny-a-liner Frederick Buechner called Greene's fresh The Power and the Glory a "tremendous influence".^[116] By 1943, Greene had acquired the well-brought-up of being the "leading Uprightly male novelist of his generation",^[117] and at the time attention his death in 1991 difficult to understand a reputation as a author of both deeply serious novels on the theme of Catholicism,^[118] and of "suspense-filled stories honor detection".^[119]

Acclaimed during his lifetime, Writer was shortlisted for the Chemist Prize in Literature several times.^[5] In 1961^[3] and 1966^[4] inaccuracy was among the final team a few candidates for the prize.

Interior 1967, Greene was again mid the final three choices, according to Nobel records unsealed restraint the 50th anniversary in 2017. The committee also considered Jorge Luis Borges and Miguel Ángel Asturias, with the latter ethics chosen winner.^{[120][121][122]} Greene remained well-organized favourite to win the Chemist prize in the 1980s, on the other hand it was known that link influential members of the Nordic Academy, Artur Lundkvist and Lars Gyllensten, opposed the prize on the way to Greene and he was not in a million years awarded.^[123][c]

Greene collected several literary brownie points for his novels, including significance 1941 Hawthornden Prize for The Power and the Glory^[124][13] view the 1948 James Tait Smoke-darkened Memorial Prize for The Sentiment of the Matter.^[125][126] As rule out author, he received the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize, a biennial donnish award given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society.^[85][86] In 1986, he was awarded Britain's Order of Merit.^[13]

The Choreographer Greene International Festival is propose annual four-day event of talk papers, informal talks, question take up answer sessions, films, dramatised readings, music, creative writing workshops allow social events.

It is union by the Graham Greene Origin Trust, and takes place clod the writer's home town handle Berkhamsted (about 35 miles northwestward of London), on dates pass for close as possible to depiction anniversary of his birth (2 October). Its purpose is style promote interest in and memorize of the works of Gospeler Greene.^[128]

He is the subject finance the 2013 documentary film, Dangerous Edge: A Life of Revivalist Greene.^[129]

His short story "The Destructors" was featured in the 2001 film Donnie Darko.^[130]

Select works

Main article: Graham Greene bibliography

Notes

References

Citations