Graham Greene Biography and List of Works

"No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness."

English novelist, short-story writer, playwright and journalist, whose novels treat moral issues in the context of political settings. Greene is one of the most widely read novelist of the 20th-century, a superb storyteller. Adventure and suspense are constant elements in his novels and many of his books have been made into successful films. Greene was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times, but he never received the award.

Graham Greene was born on October 2 1904 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He was educated at Berkhamstead School and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1926 he converted to Roman Catholicism, and moved to London where he worked for the Times of London (1926-30), and for the Spectator, where he was a film critic and a literary editor until 1940. In 1927 he married Vivien Dayrell-Browning. After the collapse of their marriage he had several relationships, among others in the 1950s with the Swedish actress Anita Björk, whose husband writer Stig Dagerman had committed suicide a year earlier.

During World War II Greene worked in an intelligence capacity for the Foreign Office in London. After the war he travelled widely as a free-lance journalist, and lived long periods in Nice, on the French Riviera. He received numerous honours from around the world, and published two volumes of autobiography, A SORT OF LIFE (1971), WAYS OF ESCAPE (1980), and the story of his friendship with Panamanian dictator Omar Torillo. - Greene died in Vevey, Switzerland, on April 3, 1991.

Greene's first published book was BABBLING APRIL (1925), a collection of poetry. It was followed by two novels in the style of Joseph Conrad. The title for THE MAN WITHIN (1929) was taken from Sir Thomas Browne's (1605-1682) "There's another man within me that's angry with me."

"In Stamboul Train for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film. The devil looks after his own and I succeeded in both aims, though the film rights seemed at the time an unlikely dream, for before I had completed the book, Marlene Dietrich had appeared in Shanghai Express, the English had made Rome Express, and even the Russians had produced their railway film, Turksib. My film came last and was far and away the worst, though not so bad as a later television production by the BBC."
(from Introduction, in Stamboul Train, 1974)

After the unsuccessful attempts as a novelist, Greene was about to abandon writing. His first popular success was STAMBOUL TRAIN (1932), a thriller with a topical and political flavour. Greene's religious convictions did not become overtly apparent in his fiction until THE BRIGHTON ROCK (1938), which depicted a teenage gangster Pinkie with a kind of demonic spirituality. Religious themes were explicit in the novels THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1940), THE HEART OF THE MATTER (1948), and THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1951), which established Greene's international reputation. These novels had much in common with the works of such French Catholic writers as Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac. Greene was perpetually concerned with the problem of grace, with the shape of God's mercy, and saw Catholicism not as a creed for the triumphant, but rather for the desperate. The End of the Affair was partly based on Greene's affair with Catherine Walston, whom he had met in 1946. They were both married, but their relationship continued over ten years and produced a book, AFTER TWO YEARS (1949), which was printed 25 copies. Most of the copies were later destroyed.

In the 1950s Greene's emphasis switched from religion to politics. THE QUIET AMERICAN (1955) was about American involvement in Indochina, THE COMEDIANS (1966) depicted Papa Doc Duvalier's repressive rule in Haiti, and THE HONORARY CONSUL (1973) was a hostage drama set in Paraguay.

As a writer Greene was very prolific and versatile. He wrote five plays and screenplays for several films based on his novels. In the 1930s and early 1940s he wrote over five hundred reviews of books, films, and plays, mainly for The Spectator.

THE THIRD MAN (1949), is among Greene's most popular books. The story about corruption and betrayal gave basis for the film classic under the same title. Successful partners on The Fallen Idol (1948) and Our Man in Havana (1960), Graham Greene and the director Carol Reed achieved the peak of their collaboration on this film. In the story Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna to discover that his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) has died in a car accident. It turns out that Lime was involved in criminal activities, and Lime's girlfriend Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli) suspects that his death may not have been accidental. A porter recalls a mysterious third man at the scene of the death. One evening Martins sees a man obscured by the shadows, who suddenly disappears - he is Lime. The meet and Lime rationalizes his villainy in a speech at a fairground Ferris wheel: "In Italy for 30 years the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce. The cuckoo clock." Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) threatens to deport Anna and Martins betrays Lime to secure her freedom. In a chase through the sewers Martins kills Lime, and Anna leaves him after the funeral. - Music, composed by Anton Karas, became highly popular.

Note: Greene's agent novels - THE TENTH MAN, OUR MAN IN HAVANNA, and HUMAN FACTOR among others - are partially based on his own experiences in the British foreign office in the 1940s. As an agent and a writer Greene is a link in a long tradition from Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and Daniel Defoe to the modern day writers John Le Carré, John Dickson Carr, Somerset Maugham, Alec Waugh and Ted Allbeury. - Note: Greene's mother was a first cousin of author Robert Louis Stevenson. Another Graham Greene is a Native American who was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for Dances With Wolves (1990)- See also: Lennart Meri, Eric Ambler

For further reading: Graham Greene's Conradian Masterplot by Robert Pendleton (1995); Graham Greene: The Man Within by Michael Shelden (1994); Graham Greene: The Enemy Within by Michael Shelden (1994); Conversations with Graham Greene, ed. by Henry J. Donaghy (1992); Graham Greene: A Study of the Short Fiction by Richard Kelly (1992); The Life of Graham Greene by Norman Sherry (1990); Graham Greene: A Revaluation, ed. by Jeffrey Meyers (1990); The Life of Graham Greene: Vol. 1 1904-1939 by Vincent Sherry (1989); A Reader's Guide to Graham Greene by Paul O'Prey (1988); Graham Greene by Richard Kelley (1985); Saints, Sins, and Comedians by Roger Sharrock (1984); The Other Man by Marie Francoise Allain (1983); Graham Greene, ed. by Samuel Hynes ( 1973); Graham Greene by David Lodge (1966); The Labyrinth Ways of Graham Greene by Francis Leo Kunkel (1960); Graham Greene and the Heart of the Matter by Marie Mesnet (1954)

Other film adaptations:

• Went the Day Well? cir. by Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942
• The Fallen Idol, dir. by Carol Reed, 1947
• Across the Bridge, dir. by Ken Annakin 1957
• TV adaptations (British TV, 1975) of short stories by Graham Greene, under the title Shades of Greene

Screenplays:

• The First and the Last (21 Days), 1937
• The New Britain, 1940
• The Brighton Rock (Young Scarface), 1947 (WITH TERENCE RATTIGAN)
• The Fallen Idol, 1948 (with Lesley Storm and William Templeton)
• The Third Man, 1948 (with Carol Reed)
• The Stranger's Hand, 1954 (with Guy Elmes and Giorgio Bassani)
• Loser Takes All, 1956
• Saint Joan, 1957
• Our Man in Havanna, 1960
• The Comedians, 1967

Babbling April, (1925)
Went the Day Well? cir. by Alberto Cavalcanti, (1942)
The Fallen Idol, dir. by Carol Reed, (1947)
Across the Bridge, dir. by Ken Annakin, (1957)
TV adaptations, (1975)