Greene, (Henry) Graham (1904-1991)

English writer. His novels of guilt, despair, and penitence are set in a world of urban seediness or political corruption in many parts of the world. They include Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Third Man (1949), The Honorary Consul (1973), and Monsignor Quixote (1982). He was one of the first English novelists both to recognize and to be influenced by the literary potential of the cinema. His work is marked by an almost cinematic technique and great visual power. Many of his novels have been filmed, and he wrote several screenplays. The Living Room (1953), The Potting Shed (1958), and The Complaisant Lover (1959) were written for the stage. In 1999 his novel The End of the Affair (1951) was made into a film, directed by Neil Jordan. Greene also wrote lighter, comic novels, including Our Man in Havana (1958) and Travels with My Aunt (1969).

Greene was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, and educated at Oxford University. He worked as a journalist on The Times, and in 1927 was converted to Roman Catholicism. When his first novel, The Man Within, was published in 1929, he gave up journalism to write full time, but attained success only with his fourth novel, the thriller Stamboul Train (1932). He was later literary editor of The Spectator 1940-41, worked in the Foreign Office 1941-44, and was a director of the publishing company Bodley Head 1958-1968.

Stamboul Train proved the success of a format used by Greene with equal skill in other works, which he preferred to describe as ‘entertainments’. They include A Gun for Sale (1936), The Confidential Agent (1939), The Ministry of Fear (1943), and The Third Man (written as a film script). Brighton Rock, about the criminal underworld, is in fact a religious novel, while The Power and the Glory explores the inner struggles of a weak, alcoholic priest in Mexico. A World War II period of service for the Foreign Office in Sierra Leone is reflected in the setting of The Heart of the Matter. His Collected Essays were published in 1969; Collected Stories in 1972; Collected Plays in 1985; and A Sort of Life (an early autobiography) in 1971.