Brighton Rock (1938)
Teenage gangster Pinkie Brown marries Rose, a witness, in the Brighton underworld
Literature · Novelists
Graham Greene
1904–1991 · English
Catholic novel; thriller and espionage fiction
Graham Greene wrote novels of guilt, faith and political intrigue set in seedy, dangerous places, a territory critics called "Greeneland". A Catholic convert and wartime MI6 officer, he divided his early work into serious novels such as Brighton Rock and The Power and the Glory and "entertainments" such as Stamboul Train, and wrote the screenplay of The Third Man.
How to spot them
- ▸'Greeneland': seedy settings, moral compromise, Catholic guilt
- ▸Pinkie Brown in Brighton; the whisky priest in Mexico; Scobie in West Africa
- ▸Harry Lime in postwar Vienna (The Third Man)
- ▸Wormold the vacuum-cleaner salesman turned spy in Havana
- ▸Born in Berkhamsted, where his father was headmaster; worked for MI6 under Kim Philby
Key works
The Power and the Glory (1940)
A hunted 'whisky priest' flees an anticlerical state government in 1930s Mexico
The Heart of the Matter (1948)
Police officer Major Scobie's pity leads him to adultery and despair in a West African colony
The Third Man (1949 (film); 1950 (novella))
Holly Martins hunts for the racketeer Harry Lime in occupied Vienna; film directed by Carol Reed
The End of the Affair (1951)
Novelist Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Miles's wartime affair, ended by her vow to God
The Quiet American (1955)
Cynical British journalist Fowler and idealistic American Pyle in French Indochina
Our Man in Havana (1958)
Vacuum-cleaner salesman Wormold invents intelligence for MI6, passing off vacuum parts as weapons
Travels with My Aunt (1969)
Retired bank manager Henry Pulling is swept into adventure by his Aunt Augusta
Key ideas
- Divided his fiction into 'novels' and lighter 'entertainments' (thrillers), a distinction he later dropped
- Explored sin, grace and damnation in his Catholic novels
- Politically engaged later novels set in Vietnam, Haiti (The Comedians), Argentina (The Honorary Consul) and Cuba
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where his father was headmaster of Berkhamsted School; studied at Balliol College, Oxford
- •Converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926, before marrying Vivien Dayrell-Browning
- •Worked for MI6 in Sierra Leone during the Second World War and later under Kim Philby
- •As a film critic he was sued for libel over his review of the Shirley Temple film Wee Willie Winkie (1937)
- •Appointed Companion of Honour (1966) and to the Order of Merit (1986)
- •Often tipped for, but never awarded, the Nobel Prize in Literature
- •Stamboul Train (1932) is set aboard the Orient Express
- •Died in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1991
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Sources
- Graham Greene Birthplace Trust — The Graham Greene Birthplace Trust
- Norman Sherry — The Life of Graham Greene