Greene Graham - The Life of Graham Greene, Volume 1: 1904-1939

Contents

Unquestionably one of the greatest novelists of his time, Graham Greene had always guarded his privacy, remaining aloof, mysterious and unpredictable. Nonetheless, he took the surprising step of allowing Norman Sherry complete access to letter and diaries, and gave his consent to this full and frank biography in three volumes - the first of which takes Greene's life up to the beginning of the Second World War.

At the heart of the story lies a remarkable series of letters Greene wrote to his wife, Vivien, for whose sake he became a Catholic. They show us an unknown, younger Greene, impassioned and romantic. Sherry also recounts in fascinating detail how Greene struggled to turn himself into a novelist and learn his craft, and follows his subject's pre-war footsteps to West Africa and Mexico, where he was able to penetrate far into the strange and alarming territory that Greene has made his own. The book that emerges is without doubt one of the most revealing literary biographies of the decade.

Norman Sherry, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, was already an accomplished biographer when Graham Greene, having read Professor Sherrys work on Joseph Conrad, asked a mutual friend to introduce them. Greene was impressed by Professor Sherrys method of literary detection, and their meeting resulted in Greene asking Professor Sherry to write his authorised biography, an exhausting but fascinating task which has resulted in The Life of Graham Greene, Volumes 1, 2 and 3.

Professor Sherrys books on Conrad, Conrads Eastern World, Conrads Western World, and Conrad and His World, are, thirty years after their publication, still quoted by scholars as the standard texts on Joseph Conrad. Professor Sherry honed his skills as a biographer with Charlotte and Emily Bront and Jane Austen.

Professor Sherry received an Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Life of Graham Greene, Volume One: 19041939. The Life of Graham Greene, Volume Two: 19391955 was designated as One of the best eleven books of 1995 by the editorial staff of the New York Times Book Review, who confirmed their admiration by featuring Volume Two in Books of the Century: A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas, and Literature (1998).

Portrait of Graham Greene by Bassano, 1939

Grahams father

Grahams mother

Graham, aged 9, and Hugh, aged 3

Graham holding a ball

Graham in a goat-cart on Brighton sea front

Graham with his brothers and sisters, c. 1916

Graham outside the potting shed, 1916

Graham and his parents in fancy dress group

Dr Fry: headmaster at Berkhamsted School, 18881910

Charles Greene at his desk

Housemaster Dr Simpson

Berkhamsted School

The canal at Berkhamsted

A school production of Pyramus and Thisbe

The funeral of the young pilot, Wimbush, March 1918

Summer term, St Johns, 1920

St Johns gym VIII

A school production of Lost Silk Hat, 1921

Kenneth Richmond, the psychoanalyst

Kenneth Bell, Grahams tutor at Balliol

Father Trollope

Graham in thoughtful mood

Ivy House, Nottingham

Gwen Howell, Grahams first love

Vivien, aged 17

Graham, aged 21

Volunteers during the General Strike, 1926

Police dispersing rioters, 1926

Exploring the Amazon by hydroplane

Shock troops at The Times awaiting orders

Graham and Viviens wedding, 1927

Running from a shower of confetti

Graham and Vivien at Little Orchard

Subeditors room at The Times, 1928

Little Orchard, 1930

Police charge hunger marchers, 1932

Father Christie

Lady Ottoline Morrell

Edith Sitwell, Neil Porter and Sengerphone

Barbara and Graham Greene

Passengers bound for Sierra Leone, 1935

Graham and Barbara on board the David Livingstone

Freetown, Sierra Leone

Graham in Liberia

Crossing a rope bridge

Graham speaking to tribal leaders

The village of Pagan Mosambolahun

Duogobmai: The Horrible Village

The Big Bush Devils hut

Crossing the St Pauls river in Liberia

Dr Harley and his children

A prisoner awaiting trial in Tapee-Ta

Filming Brighton Rock

Richard Attenborough and Carol Marsh in Brighton Rock

Shirley Temple in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Geoffrey Wylde sketching Graham Greene, 1937

Graham Greene in his St Jamess Street flat

The brothels in Matamoras Street

The Ruiz Cano at Frontera

A street in Yajalon, Northern Chiapas

Astrid and Lala Rasmussen

Frau Rasmussen with her two daughters

Ernest Raiteke

Astrid Rasmussen

The German photographer in Yajalon whom Greene met in 1938

Women bring religious articles to be burnt

The smouldering remains of religious statues

Tomas Garrido Canabal

A priest executed outside his church

Shuttered Yajalon church

Procession of saints in Chamula, Chiapas

The execution of Padre Pro

Giant crosses of the Chamula Indians

Graham Greene, c. 1939

Vivien, a few years later

LINE ILLUSTRATIONS

The Star, 18 January 1921

Graham and Viviens secret code

Greenes drawing of his stitches after his appendix was removed

Not tears I give (from letter 7 January 1927)

Marriage Service sheet

Cutting from the News Chronicle, 7 January 1935, with a picture of Greene and his cousin Barbara leaving for Liberia

Map of Liberia

Visiting card for Col Elwood Davis, Liberian Army

Postcard from Vivien to Ben Husch giving directions to 14 North Side, Clapham Common

Cover of the first issue of Night and Day by Feliks Topolski

Map of Graham Greenes Brighton

Sketch of Greene by Geoffrey Wylde

The Blue Book

Map of Tabasco and Chiapas

Greenes drawing of Don Pelito

for Elisabeth Dennys
with love

Many years will go by. Many great years. I shall then no longer be alive. There will be no return to the times of our fathers and grandfathers. This would, indeed, be both undesirable and unnecessary. But at last there will appear once more things that have long lain dormant: noble, creative and great things. It will be a time of final accounting Think of me then.

BORIS PASTERNAK

This biography had its origins in a list which Graham Greene kept and still keeps of the books he reads. Against my second book on Joseph Conrad, Conrads Western World, he had put in July 1971 two ticks, indicating special approval. Three years later the journalist William Igoe told me, over lunch, There is a man who is a legend in his own time and who admires your work. That man was Graham Greene. When he was next in London we were introduced. I did not know then that he was under some pressure from his family and friends to appoint a biographer, but during lunch, while I was still fascinated by his singular smile and eyes so blue that they gave off a curious sense of blindness, he suddenly said, You wouldnt be able to write about me as you wrote about Conrad you wouldnt be able to get into Saigon (the setting of