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:This article is about the writer Graham Greene. 
For the Canadian actor, see Graham Greene (actor).


Graham Greene (October 2, 1904 Berkhamsted,
Hertfordshire – April 3, 1991 Vevey,
Switzerland) was a prolific England|English
novelist, playwright, short story writer and
critic whose works explore the ambiguities of
modern man in a contemporary setting.  Some of his
best works, like Brighton Rock and The Power and
the Glory, are explicitly Roman Catholic in
content and preoccupations.  Others he termed
"entertainments", although many of them likewise
deal with ambivalent moral or political issues
which had earned him a worldwide readership and
following.

== Life and work ==
He was born Henry Graham Greene, a son of the
headmaster of Berkhamsted School, which he
attended. He went on to Balliol College, Oxford,
and his first work (a volume of poetry) was
published in 1925, while he was an undergraduate. 
In his autobiography, he gives many details of his
difficult childhood. After graduation, he took up
a career in journalism. He became a Roman Catholic
in 1926 so he could marry Catholic convert Vivien
Daryell-Browning, which he did the following year.

His work as a journalist included book and film
reviews for The Spectator (1828)|The Spectator,
and co-editing the magazine Night and Day, which
closed down shortly after Greene's comments about
Shirley Temple (and the sexual exploitation of her
body by Hollywood movie moguls) caused the
magazine to lose a libel case.

His novels are written in a contemporary,
realistic style, often featuring characters
troubled by self-doubt and living in seedy or
rootless circumstances. The doubts were often of a
religious nature, echoing the author's ambiguous
attitude to Catholicism. 

Throughout his life, Greene was obsessed with
travelling far from his native England, to what he
called the "wild and remote" places of the world.
His travels provided him with opportunities to
engage in espionage on behalf of the United
Kingdom (in Sierra Leone, for example) - he had
been recruited to MI6 by the notorious double
agent Kim Philby.  He reworked the colorful and
exciting characters and places he encountered into
the fabric of his novels.

Greene's books were originally divided into two
genres: thrillers or mystery/suspense books, such
as Brighton Rock, that he himself cast as
"entertainments" but which often included a
notable philosophical edge, and literary works
such as The Power and the Glory, on which his
reputation was thought to be based. As his career
lengthened, however, Greene and his readers both
found the "entertainments" to be of nearly as high
a value as the literary efforts, and Greene's
later efforts such as The Human Factor, The
Comedians (novel)|The Comedians, Our Man in Havana
and The Quiet American combine these modes into
works of remarkable insight and compression.

Many of his books have been filmed, and he also
wrote an original screenplay for the film The
Third Man.

In the last years of his life, Greene lived in the
small resort city of Vevey, on Lake Geneva in
Switzerland. On his passing in 1991, he was
interred in the nearby cemetery in
Corsier-sur-Vevey.  Although he never divorced
Daryell-Browning, they had separated shortly after
WWII, and he was living with Yvonne Cloetta at the
time of his death. 

October 2004 saw the publication of the third and
final volume of The Life of Graham Greene by
Norman Sherry, Greene's official biographer. The
writing of this biography created a story in
itself in that Sherry followed in Greene's
footsteps, even coming down with diseases that
Greene had come down with in the same place. 
Sherry's work reveals that Greene continued to
submit reports to British intelligence until the
end of his life.  This has led scholars and
Greene's reading public to entertain the
provocative question, "Was Greene a novelist who
was also a spy, or was his lifelong literary
career the perfect cover?"

==Bibliography==
=== Verse ===
*Babbling April 1925

=== Novels ===
*The Man Within 1929
*The Name of Action 1930
*Rumour at Nightfall 1932
*Stamboul Train 1932
*It's a Battlefield 1934
*England Made Me 1935
*A Gun for Sale 1936
*Brighton Rock 1938
*The Confidential Agent 1939
*The Power and the Glory 1940 (also published as
The Labyrinthine Ways)
*The Ministry of Fear 1943
*The Heart of the Matter 1948
*The Third Man 1950 novella as a "trial run" for
the screenplay of a film directed by Carol Reed
*The End of the Affair 1951
*The Quiet American 1955
*Loser Takes All 1955
*Our Man in Havana 1958
*A Burnt-Out Case 1960
*The Comedians 1965
*Travels with My Aunt 1969
*The Honorary Consul 1973
*The Human Factor 1978
*Doctor Fischer of Geneva 1980
*Monsignor Quixote 1982
*The Tenth Man 1985
*The Captain and the Enemy 1988

=== Autobiography ===
*A Sort of Life 1971 (autobiography)
*Ways of Escape 1980 (autobiography)
*A World of My Own 1992 (dream diary, posthumously
published)

=== Travel books ===
*Journey Without Maps 1936
*The Lawless Roads 1939
*In Search of a Character: Two African Journals
1961

=== Plays ===
*The Living Room 1953
*The Potting Shed 1957
*The Complaisant Lover 1959
*Carving a Statue 1964
*The Return of A.J.Raffles 1975
*The Great Jowett 1981
*Yes and No 1983
*For Whom the Bell Chimes 1983

=== Short stories (selected)===
listdev
*"The Destructors" 1954
*"A Sense Of Reality" 1963
*"The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" 1965
*"The Last Word" 1988
*"The Basement Room" (later turned into a film
directed by Carol Reed)

=== Other ===
*Introduction to My Silent War, by Kim Philby,
1968, British Intelligence traitor, mole for
Soviets

==Further reading==
* Norman Sherry|Sherry, Norman (1989-2004), The
Life of Graham Greene: vol. 1 1904-1939, (pub.
Random House UK, 1989, ISBN 0224026542), Viking
ed. 1989: ISBN 0670813761, Penguin reprint 2004:
ISBN 0142004200
* Norman Sherry|Sherry, Norman, The Life of Graham
Greene: vol. 2 1939-1955, (pub. Viking 1994: ISBN
0670860565), Penguin reprint 2004: ISBN 0142004219
* Norman Sherry|Sherry, Norman, The Life of Graham
Greene: vol. 3 1955-1991, (pub. Viking 2004, ISBN
0670031429)

== External links ==

*http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/
Greeneland: the world of Graham Greene
*http://www.angelfire.com/journal/ggbtps/GGBT_Site
Map.htm The Graham Greene Birthplace Trust
*http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&
UID=1864 Graham Greene Writeup in the Literary
Encyclopedia
*http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/greene.htm Biography
at Authors' Calendar website
*http://www.hirohurl.net/lawlessroads.html A
Review of Graham Greene's "Lawless Roads"