Graham Greene’s own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime or the Whisky Priest.
A restless traveller, he was a witness to many of the key events of modern history – including the origins of the Vietnam War, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the betrayal of the double-agent Kim Philby, the rise of Fidel Castro and the guerrilla wars of Central America. A work of wit, insight and compassion, this new biography responds to the many thousands of pages of lost letters that have recently come to light and to memoirs by those who knew him best.
The Perfect Spy
‘I have tried, however unsuccessfully, to live again the follies and sentimentalities and exaggerations of the distant time, and to feel them, as I felt them then, without irony,’ wrote Graham...
Read moreGreene but Colourful
For the past couple of years I’ve been researching a book about the Greene family. The Greene King brewery, on which its fortunes are based, dates back to the Napoleonic period, but since I’m...
Read moreDon’t Give up the Day Job
I first read Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train when I was 12, and the set-up was instantly recognizable – a disparate group of English people thrown together on a rail journey across a snowy Europe...
Read moreIn a Class of Their Own
The Old School is made up of seventeen essays by writers who achieved literary distinction later in life, though some are all but forgotten today. Apart from Auden, still familiar names include...
Read more
