Graham Greene

Template:Short description {{#invoke:Other people|otherPeople}} Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer

Henry Graham Greene Template:Postnominals (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.

Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times.<ref name="svd">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="nobelprize1966">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=Prize /> Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).

He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning.<ref name=Donaghy1983>Template:Cite book</ref> Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic".<ref name=Sweeney2008>Template:Cite book</ref> He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia,<ref name=mcgowin /> and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland.<ref name=Swissinfo /> William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> V. S. Pritchett called him "The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings and who understands the tragic and comic ironies of love, loyalty and belief."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early years (1904–1922)Edit

File:St. John’s boarding house Berkhamsted 1.jpg

Greene was born in Berkhamsted School where his father taught.

File:Graham Greene's Birthplace blue plaque crop.jpg

Graham Greene's birthplace blue plaque

Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St John's House, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, where his father was house master.<ref name=berkhamsted-tour>Template:Cite book</ref> He was the fourth of six children; his younger brother, Hugh, became Director-General of the BBC,<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> and his elder brother, Raymond, an eminent physician and mountaineer.<ref name="timesobit" />

His parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion Raymond Greene, were first cousins, both members of a large, influential family that included the owners of Greene King Brewery, bankers, and statesmen;Template:Sfn his grandmother Jane Wilson was first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson.<ref name="oxforddnb.com" />

Charles Greene was second master at Berkhamsted School, where the headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry, who was married to Charles' cousin.Template:Sfn Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene, whose politics led to his internment during World War II.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In his childhood, Greene spent his summers at Harston House, the Cambridgeshire home of his uncle, Sir Graham Greene.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In Greene's description of his childhood, he describes his learning to read there: "It was at Harston I quite suddenly found that I could read—the book was Dixon Brett, Detective. I didn't want anyone to know of my discovery, so I read only in secret, in a remote attic, but my mother must have spotted what I was at all the same, for she gave me Ballantyne's Coral Island for the train journey home—always an interminable journey with the long wait between trains at Bletchley..."Template:Sfn

In 1910, Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster of Berkhamsted. Graham also attended the school as a boarder. Bullied and profoundly depressed, he made several suicide attempts, including, as he wrote in his autobiography, by Russian roulette and by taking aspirin before going swimming in the school pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a radical step for the time, he was sent for psychoanalysis for six months in London, afterwards returning to school as a day student.Template:Sfn School friends included the journalist Claud Cockburn and the historian Peter Quennell.Template:Sfn

Greene contributed several stories to the school magazine,Template:Sfn one of which was published by a London evening newspaperTemplate:Sfn in January 1921.

Oxford UniversityEdit

He attended Balliol College, Oxford, to study history. During 1922 Greene was for a short time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and sought an invitation to the new Soviet Union, of which nothing came.<ref name="G">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1925, while he was an undergraduate at Balliol, his first work, a poorly received volume of poetry titled Babbling April, was published.<ref name="G" />

Greene had periodic bouts of depression while at Oxford, and largely kept to himself.<ref name="oxforddnb.com">Michael Shelden, 'Greene, (Henry) Graham (1904–1991)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2008 accessed 15 May 2011</ref> Of Greene's time at Oxford, his contemporary Evelyn Waugh noted that: "Graham Greene looked down on us (and perhaps all undergraduates) as childish and ostentatious. He certainly shared in none of our revelry."<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> He graduated in 1925 with a second-class degree in history.<ref name="G" />

Writing careerEdit

After leaving Oxford, Greene worked as a private tutor and then turned to journalism; first on the Nottingham Journal,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and then as a sub-editor on The Times.<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> While he was still at Oxford, he had started corresponding with Vivien Dayrell-Browning, who had written to him to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine.<ref name="telly" />Template:Sfn<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> Greene was an agnostic, but when he later began to think about marrying Vivien, it occurred to him that, as he puts it in his autobiography A Sort of Life, he "ought at least to learn the nature and limits of the beliefs she held".Template:Sfn Greene was baptised on 28 February 1926Template:Sfn and they married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, London.Template:Sfn

He published his first novel, The Man Within, in 1929; its favourable reception enabled him to work full-time as a novelist.<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres (which he described as "entertainments" and "novels"): thrillers—often with notable philosophic edges—such as The Ministry of Fear; and literary works—on which he thought his literary reputation would rest—such as The Power and the Glory.

The next two books, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932), were unsuccessful,<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> and he later disowned them.<ref name="timesobit" /> His first true success was Stamboul Train (1932) which was taken on by the Book SocietyTemplate:Sfn and adapted as the film Orient Express, in 1934.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Although Greene objected to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic,Template:Efn Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair,<ref name=mcgowin>Graham Greene, The Major Novels: A Centenary Template:Webarchive by Kevin McGowin, Eclectica Magazine</ref> which have been named "the gold standard" of the Catholic novel.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Several works, such as The Confidential Agent, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, and his screenplay for The Third Man, also show Greene's avid interest in the workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage. In the early 1930s Greene moved to the left politically. He read left-wing writers like G.D.H. Cole and John Strachey; in 1933 he joined the Independent Labour Party. This move to the left is reflected in the characters and plot of his fifth novel It's A Battlefield.Template:Sfn His later political affiliations and convictions were more ambiguous.Template:Sfn

He supplemented his novelist's income with freelance journalism, book and film reviews for The Spectator, and co-editing the magazine Night and Day. Greene's 1937 film review<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> of Wee Willie Winkie, for Night and Day—which said that the nine-year-old star, Shirley Temple, displayed "a dubious coquetry" which appealed to "middle-aged men and clergymen"Template:Sfn—provoked Twentieth Century Fox successfully to sue for £3,500 plus costs,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and Greene left the UK to live in Mexico until after the trial was over.<ref name=Johnson>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> While in Mexico, Greene developed the ideas for the novel often considered his masterpiece, The Power and the Glory.<ref name=Johnson />

By the 1950s, Greene had become known as one of the finest writers of his generation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>13 Must-Read Graham Greene Books earlybirdbooks.com, accessed 31 October 2020</ref>

As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between his 'entertainments' and novels increasingly problematic. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958.

Greene also wrote short stories and plays, which were well received, although he was always first and foremost a novelist. His first play, The Living Room, debuted in 1953.<ref name="Billington">Template:Cite news</ref>

Michael Korda, a lifelong friend and later his editor at Simon & Schuster, observed Greene at work: Greene wrote in a small black leather notebook with a black fountain pen and would write approximately 500 words. Korda described this as Graham's daily penance—once he finished he put the notebook away for the rest of the day.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

His writing influences included Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Marcel Proust, Charles Péguy and John Buchan.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Sfn

Travel and espionageEdit

Throughout his life, Greene travelled to what he called the world's wild and remote places. In 1941, the travels led to his being recruited into MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for the agency. Accordingly, he was posted to Sierra Leone during the Second World War.<ref>Christopher Hawtree. "A Muse on the tides of history: Elisabeth Dennys". The Guardian, 10 February 1999. Retrieved 16 April 2011.</ref> Kim Philby, who would later be revealed as a Soviet agent, was Greene's supervisor and friend at MI6.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Greene resigned from MI6 in 1944.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He later wrote an introduction to Philby's 1968 memoir, My Silent War.<ref>Greene's introduction to the Philby book is mentioned in Christopher Hitchens' introduction to Our Man in Havana (pg xx of the Penguin Classics edition)</ref> Greene also corresponded with intelligence officer and spy, John Cairncross, for forty years and that correspondence is held by the John J. Burns Library, at Boston College.<ref>"The Spy Who Wrote Me Burns Lands Graham Greene Correspondence With Soviet Agent." Boston College Chronicle, Volume 8, Number 4, 14 October 1999.</ref>

Part of Greene's reputation as a novelist is for weaving the characters he met and the places where he lived into the fabric of his novels.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Greene first left Europe at 30 years of age in 1935 on a trip to Liberia that produced the travel book Journey Without Maps.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His 1938 trip to Mexico to see the effects of the government's campaign of forced anti-Catholic secularisation was paid for by the publishing company Longman, thanks to his friendship with Tom Burns.<ref>Graham Greene, Uneasy Catholic Times Literary Supplement, 22 August 2006.</ref> That voyage produced two books, the nonfiction The Lawless Roads (published as Another Mexico in the US) and the novel The Power and the Glory. In 1953, the Holy Office informed Greene that The Power and the Glory was damaging to the reputation of the priesthood; but later, in a private audience with Greene, Pope Paul VI told him that, although parts of his novels would offend some Catholics, he should ignore the criticism.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1954, Greene travelled to Haiti,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> where The Comedians (1966) is set,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and which was then under the rule of dictator François Duvalier, known as "Papa Doc", frequently staying at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He visited Haiti again in the late 1950s. As inspiration for his novel A Burnt-Out Case (1960), Greene spent time travelling around Africa visiting a number of leper colonies in the Congo Basin and in what were then the British Cameroons.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> During this trip in late February and early March 1959, Greene met several times with Andrée de Jongh, a leader in the Belgian resistance during WWII, who famously established an escape route to Gibraltar through the Pyrenees for downed allied airmen.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1957, just months after Fidel Castro began his final revolutionary assault on the Batista regime in Cuba, Greene played a small role in helping the revolutionaries, as a secret courier transporting warm clothing for Castro's rebels hiding in the hills during the Cuban winter.<ref name="WashPost041491">Template:Cite news</ref> Castro, like Daniel Ortega and Omar Torrijos, was one of several Latin American leaders Greene's friendship with whom has led some commentators to question his commitment to democracy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> After one visit Castro gave Greene a painting he had done, which hung in the living room of the French house where the author spent the last years of his life.<ref name="WashPost041491" /> Greene did later voice doubts about Castro, telling a French interviewer in 1983, "I admire him for his courage and his efficiency, but I question his authoritarianism," adding: "All successful revolutions, however idealistic, probably betray themselves in time."<ref name="WashPost041491" />

Publishing careerEdit

Between 1944 and 1948, Greene was director at Eyre & Spottiswoode under chairman Douglas Jerrold, in charge of developing its fiction list.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Greene created The Century Library series, which was discontinued after he left following a conflict with Jerrold regarding Anthony Powell's contract. In 1958, Greene was offered the position of chairman by Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre, but declined.Template:Sfn

He was a director at The Bodley Head from 1957 to 1968 under Max Reinhardt.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

Greene was an agnostic, but was baptised into the Catholic faith in 1926 after meeting his future wife Vivien Dayrell-Browning.<ref name=Donaghy1983/> They were married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, north London.<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> The Greenes had two children, Lucy Caroline (born 1933) and Francis (born 1936).<ref name="oxforddnb.com" />

In his discussions with Father George Trollope,<ref name="Christendom">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the priest to whom he went for instruction in Catholicism, Greene argued with the cleric "on the ground of dogmatic atheism", as Greene's primary difficulty with religion was what he termed the "if" surrounding God's existence. He found, however, that "after a few weeks of serious argument the 'if' was becoming less and less improbable",<ref name="Pearce">Joseph Pearce. "Graham Greene: Doubter Par Excellence", CatholicAuthors.com. Retrieved 7 January 2011.</ref> and Greene converted and was baptised after vigorous arguments initially with the priest in which he defended atheism, or at least the "if" of agnosticism.<ref>The Power and the Glory New York: Viking, 1990. Introduction by John Updike, p. xiv.</ref> Late in life, Greene called himself a "Catholic agnostic".<ref name="Sweeney2008" />

Beginning in 1946, Greene had an affair with Catherine Walston, the wife of Henry Walston, a wealthy farmer and future life peer.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> That relationship is generally thought to have informed the writing of The End of the Affair, published in 1951, when the relationship came to an end.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite news Template:Cbignore</ref> Greene left his family in 1947,Template:Sfn but Vivien refused to grant him a divorce, in accordance with Catholic teaching,Template:Sfn and they remained married until Greene's death in 1991.

Greene lived with manic depression (bipolar disorder).Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He had a history of depression, which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In a letter to his wife, he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life", and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Final yearsEdit

File:Graham Greene grave in Corseaux.JPG

Gravestone at Corseaux, Switzerland

Greene left Britain in 1966, moving to Antibes,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> to be close to Yvonne Cloetta, whom he had known since 1959, a relationship that endured until his death.<ref name="telly" /><ref name="oxforddnb.com" /> In 1973, he had an uncredited cameo appearance as an insurance company representative in François Truffaut's film Day for Night.<ref name="caterson" /> In 1981, Greene was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, awarded to writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society.<ref name="jbook" /><ref name="shipler">Template:Cite news</ref>

He lived the last years of his life in Corseaux, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, near Vevey where Charlie Chaplin was living in at this time. He visited Chaplin often, and the two were good friends.<ref name=Swissinfo>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfn His book Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party (1980) is based on themes of combined philosophical and geographical influences. He ceased going to mass and confession in the 1950s, but in his final years began to receive the sacraments again from Father Leopoldo Durán, a Spanish priest, who became a friend.Template:Sfn

In one of his final works, a pamphlet titled J'Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice (1982), Greene wrote of a legal matter that embroiled him and his extended family in Nice, and declared that organised crime flourished in Nice because the city's upper levels of civic government protected judicial and police corruption. The accusation provoked a libel lawsuit that Greene lost,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> but he was ultimately vindicated in the 1990s when the former mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin, was imprisoned for corruption and associated crimes.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Sfn

In 1984, in celebration of his 80th birthday, the brewery which Greene's great-grandfather founded in 1799 made a special edition of its St. Edmund's Ale for him, with a special label in his honour.<ref name=Vinocur030385>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Commenting on turning 80, Greene said, "The big advantage ... is that at 80 you are more likely these days to beat out encountering your end in a nuclear war," adding, "the other side of the problem is that I really don't want to survive myself [which] has nothing to do with nukes, but with the body hanging around while the mind departs."<ref name=Vinocur030385/>

In 1986, Greene was awarded Britain's Order of Merit. He died of leukaemia in 1991 at the age of 86,<ref name=mcgowin /> and was buried in Corseaux cemetery.<ref name=Swissinfo />

Writing style and themesEdit

File:German book cover "Der stille Amerikaner" by Graham Greene, orig. "The Quiet American", 2nd edition 8 weeks after 1st edition, 1956.jpg

Cover of the second German edition of The Quiet American (1956), claiming to be on sale only 8 weeks after the first edition, with the implication that the first is already sold out

Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres: thrillers (mystery and suspense books), such as The Ministry of Fear, which he described as entertainments, often with notable philosophic edges; and literary works, such as The Power and the Glory, which he described as novels, on which he thought his literary reputation was to be based.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between "entertainments" and "novels" to be less evident. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. When Travels with My Aunt was published eleven years later, many reviewers noted that Greene had designated it a novel, even though, as a work decidedly comic in tone, it appeared closer to his last two entertainments, Loser Takes All and Our Man in Havana, than to any of the novels. Greene, they speculated, seemed to have dropped the category of entertainment. This was soon confirmed. In the Collected Edition of Greene's works published in 22 volumes between 1970 and 1982, the distinction between novels and entertainments is no longer maintained. All are novels.

Greene was one of the more "cinematic" of twentieth-century writers; most of his novels and many of his plays and short stories have been adapted for film or television.<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /><ref name="caterson">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Internet Movie Database lists 66 titles between 1934 and 2010 based on Greene material. Some novels were filmed more than once, such as Brighton Rock in 1947 and 2011, The End of the Affair in 1955 and 1999, and The Quiet American in 1958 and 2002. The 1936 thriller A Gun for Sale was filmed at least five times under different titles, notably This Gun for Hire in 1942. Greene received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay for Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948),<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> adapted from his own short story The Basement Room.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He also wrote several original screenplays.<ref name="timesobit" /> In 1949, after writing the novella as "raw material", he wrote the screenplay for a classic film noir, The Third Man, also directed by Reed and featuring Orson Welles.<ref name="oxforddnb.com" /><ref name="telly">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1983, The Honorary Consul, published ten years earlier, was released as a film (under the title Beyond the Limit in some territories), starring Michael Caine and Richard Gere.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Author and screenwriter Michael Korda contributed a foreword and introduction to this novel in a commemorative edition.

In 2009, The Strand Magazine began to publish in serial form a newly discovered Greene novel titled The Empty Chair.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The manuscript was written in longhand when Greene was 22 and newly converted to Catholicism.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Greene's literary style was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction, of ancestry, and of independent life". Commenting on the lean prose and its readability, Richard Jones wrote in the Virginia Quarterly Review that "nothing deflects Greene from the main business of holding the reader's attention".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Greene's novels often have religious themes at their centre. In his literary criticism he attacked the modernist writers Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster for having lost the religious sense which, he argued, resulted in dull, superficial characters, who "wandered about like cardboard symbols through a world that is paper-thin".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Only in recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul that carries the permanent consequence of salvation or damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace, could the novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the world Greene depicts; and Catholicism is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin, and doubt. V. S. Pritchett praised Greene as the first English novelist since Henry James to present, and grapple with, the reality of evil.<ref name="Crisis">The Catholic Novels of Graham Greene, Crisis Magazine, May 2005.</ref> Greene concentrated on portraying the characters' internal lives—their mental, emotional, and spiritual depths. His stories are often set in poor, hot and dusty tropical places such as Mexico, West Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, and Argentina, which led to the coining of the expression "Greeneland" to describe such settings.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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The novels often portray the dramatic struggles of the individual soul from a Catholic perspective. Greene was criticised for certain tendencies in an unorthodox direction—in the world, sin is omnipresent to the degree that the vigilant struggle to avoid sinful conduct is doomed to failure, hence not central to holiness. His friend and fellow Catholic Evelyn Waugh attacked that as a revival of the Quietist heresy. This aspect of his work also was criticised by the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, as giving sin a mystique. Greene responded that constructing a vision of pure faith and goodness in the novel was beyond his talents. Praise of Greene from an orthodox Catholic point of view by Edward Short is in Crisis Magazine,<ref name="Crisis" /> and a mainstream Catholic critique is presented by Joseph Pearce.<ref name=Pearce />

Catholicism's prominence decreased in his later writings.Template:Sfn Template:Efn The supernatural realities that haunted the earlier work declined and were replaced by a humanistic perspective, a change reflected in his public criticism of orthodox Catholic teaching.

In his later years, Greene was a strong critic of American imperialism and sympathised with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom he had met.<ref name="Kirjasto">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="lebrecht">Template:Cite news</ref> Years before the Vietnam War, he prophetically attacked the idealistic but arrogant beliefs of The Quiet American, whose certainty in his own virtue kept him from seeing the disaster he inflicted on the Vietnamese.<ref>For Greene's views on politics, see also Template:Cite journal</ref> In Ways of Escape, reflecting on his Mexican trip, he complained that Mexico's government was insufficiently left-wing compared with Cuba's.<ref name="P.xii of John Updike">P.xii of John Updike's introduction to The Power and the Glory New York: Viking, 1990.</ref> In Greene's opinion, "Conservatism and Catholicism should be ... impossible bedfellows".<ref name="P.xii of John Updike" />

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In May 1949, the New Statesman held a contest for parodies of Greene's writing style: he himself submitted an entry under the name "N. Wilkinson", and took second place. Greene's entry comprised the first two paragraphs of a novel, apparently set in Italy, The Stranger's Hand: An Entertainment. Greene's friend, the film director Mario Soldati, believed it had the makings of a suspense film about Yugoslav spies in postwar Venice. Upon Soldati's prompting, Greene continued writing the story as the basis for a film script.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Apparently he lost interest in the project, leaving it as a substantial fragment that was published posthumously in The Graham Greene Film Reader (1993)Template:Sfn and No Man's Land (2005).Template:Sfn A script for The Stranger's Hand was written by Guy Elmes on the basis of Greene's unfinished story, and filmed by Soldati.Template:Sfn<ref name="caterson" />Template:Sfn In 1965, Greene again entered a similar New Statesman competition pseudonymously, and won an honourable mention.

Nobel Prize in Literature candidateEdit

Acclaimed during his lifetime, Greene was for many years a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he was shortlisted for the prize several times by the Nobel committee.<ref name=Prize>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1961 he was among the final three candidates for the prize. Anders Österling, chair of the Nobel committee, stated that Greene "is fully worthy of the prize, not just in regard of his most recent work [A Burnt-Out Case], but for his vigorous work as a whole", but the prize that year was awarded to the Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andrić.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="svd" />

In 1966<ref name="nobelprize1966"/> and 1967, Greene was again among the final three choices, according to Nobel records unsealed on the 50th anniversary. For the 1967 prize the committee also considered Jorge Luis Borges and Miguel Ángel Asturias. Committee chairman Anders Österling again pushed for a prize to Greene describing him as "an accomplished observer whose experience encompasses a global diversity of external environments, and above all the mysterious aspects of the inner world, human conscience, anxiety and nightmares", but ultimately Asturias was the chosen winner.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1969, when Samuel Beckett and André Malraux were the main contenders for the prize, Greene's candidacy was however dismissed by the Nobel committee. Committee member Karl Ragnar Gierow stated: "Despite my admiration for several of his earlier works, I would not even then have placed him in the class where a Nobel laureate belongs".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The following year Gierow further elaborated that Greene's best work was too far back in time, and that his most recent novel Travels With My Aunt was not of Nobel prize class, stating "If the committee excludes him from its proposal this year, it seems to mean that it considers him out of the discussion, in case he does not return to the level that once made his name relevant."<ref name="Gierow">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Following the publication of his novel The Honorary Consul, Greene was shortlisted again in 1974, but this time the Nobel committee was hesitant to award an English language novelist for a second year in succession following the prize awarded to Patrick White the previous year, and Greene was passed over.<ref name="gierow">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Greene remained a favourite to win the Nobel prize in the 1980s, but it was known that two influential members of the Swedish Academy, Artur Lundkvist and Lars Gyllensten, opposed the prize for Greene and he was never awarded.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Efn

LegacyEdit

File:GRAHAM GREENE 1904 - 1991 Writer lived here 1935 - 1940.jpg

Blue plaque erected in 2011 by English Heritage at 14 Clapham Common North Side, Clapham, London.

Greene is regarded as a major 20th-century novelist,Template:Sfn and was praised by John Irving, before Greene's death, as "the most accomplished living novelist in the English language".<ref name=Irving>Irving, John. The Imaginary Girlfriend. New York, Ballantine Books, 2002, p. 31.</ref> Novelist Frederick Buechner called Greene's novel The Power and the Glory a "tremendous influence".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> By 1943, Greene had acquired the reputation of being the "leading English male novelist of his generation",Template:Sfn and at the time of his death in 1991 had a reputation as a writer of both deeply serious novels on the theme of Catholicism,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and of "suspense-filled stories of detection".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Greene collected several literary awards for his novels, including the 1941 Hawthornden Prize for The Power and the Glory<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="timesobit">Template:Cite news</ref> and the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Heart of the Matter.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> As an author, he received the 1968 Shakespeare Prize Template:Sfn and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize, a biennial literary award given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society.<ref name="jbook">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="shipler" /> In 1986, he was awarded Britain's Order of Merit.<ref name="timesobit" />

The Graham Greene International Festival is an annual four-day event of conference papers, informal talks, question and answer sessions, films, dramatised readings, music, creative writing workshops and social events. It is organised by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, and takes place in the writer's home town of Berkhamsted (about 35 miles northwest of London), on dates as close as possible to the anniversary of his birth (2 October). Its purpose is to promote interest in and study of the works of Graham Greene.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He is the subject of the 2013 documentary film, Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene.<ref name="Jones">Template:Cite news</ref>

His short story "The Destructors" was featured in the 2001 film Donnie Darko.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Selected worksEdit

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The Man Within (debut —1929)
Stamboul Train (1932) (also published as Orient Express in the US)
It's a Battlefield (1934)
England Made Me (also published as The Shipwrecked) (1935)
A Gun for Sale (1936)
Journey Without Maps (1936)
Brighton Rock (1938)
The Lawless Roads (1939) (also published as Another Mexico in the US)
The Confidential Agent (1939)
The Power and the Glory (1940)
The Ministry of Fear (1943)
The Heart of the Matter (1948)
The Third Man (1950) (novella written in 1948 as a preliminary to Greene's screenplay for the film The Third Man)
The End of the Affair (1951)
Twenty-One Stories (1954) (short stories)
Loser Takes All (1955)
The Quiet American (1955)
The Potting Shed (1956)
Our Man in Havana (1958)
A Burnt-Out Case (1960)
In Search of a Character: Two African Journals (1961)
The Comedians (1966)
Travels with My Aunt (1969)
A Sort of Life (1971)
The Honorary Consul (1973)
The Human Factor (1978)
Ways of Escape (1980)
Doctor Fischer of Geneva (1980)
Monsignor Quixote (1982)
Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement (1984)
The Tenth Man (1985)
The Captain and the Enemy (1988)
The Last Word (1990) (short stories)

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NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

CitationsEdit

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Works citedEdit

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External linksEdit

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Digital collections

Physical collections

Graham Greene Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
Graham Greene Papers Template:Webarchive at John J. Burns Library, Boston College
Graham Greene Collection at Emory University
Graham Greene Letters at Columbia University
Bryan Forbes Collection of Graham Greene Template:Webarchive at the British Library
The Cherry Record Collection of Josephine Reid's Papers and Books Relating to Graham Greene at Balliol College Archives & Manuscripts

Other links

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