Sample from Mystery Fiction

From Graham Greene
The Third Man

Henry Graham Greene (1904-1991) was born in Hertfordshire, England, the fourth of six children of Charles Greene, senior master and soon to become Head of Berkhamsted School.  The Greenes were part of a large middle class family that had made money in banking and brewing, and had connections in the professions and the arts.  Graham’s mother was a cousin of the author, Robert Louis Stevenson.  Graham had what was then a typical middle class upbringing, in which children were rarely seen or heard, coming down from the nursery with Nanny for an hour with Father and Mother in the evening.  He was a sensitive child with many childish fears – like the witch that lived in the cupboard on the landing – but he learnt early to keep these to himself.  Despite such fears his childhood was happy – until he started at Berkhamsted School.  This was considered to be a good school, but Greene hated it, at least partly because he always felt shunned by the other boys because his father was the Head.  The loss of childhood innocence is a theme that appears often in his writing.

After school he went to Oxford, where he gained a BA in 1925.  He had written a book of poems and begun a novel, and after a couple of false starts, including a job with the British American Tobacco Company which would have involved moving to China, he began a career as a journalist.  He became a sub-editor, at first in Nottingham, and then from 1926-1930 with The Times in London.  While in Nottingham, he fell in love with a young Roman Catholic convert, Vivien Dayrell-Browning, who wouldn’t marry him unless he also became a Roman Catholic, which he did in 1926.  They were married in 1927, and had two children.  He had a number of affairs and they separated in 1948.  He later described himself as ‘a bad husband and a fickle lover’.