Graham Greene (59 page)
Authors: Richard Greene
‘— he always carried a revolver in his pocket!’ (
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) A poet and a member of General Omar Torrijos’s security guard, Chuchu took Graham to see whatever he wanted in Panama, including the canal and a haunted house.
FBI file on Graham Greene offered for sale at Sotheby’s. Oddly enough, the file contained almost nothing he had not made public himself.
‘I have absolute trust in you …’ (
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) Graham and his niece Louise Dennys. She edited his last works and was his Canadian publisher.
‘I doubt if the C.I.A. will enjoy having me around!’ (
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) Graham’s travels in Central America were guided by
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correspondent Bernard Diederich. Here they are sipping rum punch on the Panamanian island of Contadora.
‘You have reached the point when all the little people become jealous.’ (
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) Greene thought Dame Muriel Spark one of the few brilliant novelists of his time.
Hunting for bargains. Greene believed that if he had not been a novelist he might have been a bookseller.
The burial of Graham Greene in Corseaux, Switzerland, in 1991. In the background are, from left, his estranged wife Vivien Greene, daughter Caroline Bourget and companion Yvonne Cloetta.
| Adamson | Judith Adamson, Graham Greene and Cinema (Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1984) |
| Allain | Marie-Françoise Allain, The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene , trans. Guido Waldman (London: The Bodley Head, 1983) |
| Amory | Mark Amory, ed., The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980) Articles of Faith Ian Thomson, ed., Articles of Faith: The Collected Tablet Journalism of Graham Greene (Oxford: Signal Books, 2006) |
| Cash | William Cash, The Third Woman (London: Little, Brown, 2000) |
| Cloetta | Yvonne Cloetta and Marie-Françoise Allain, In Search of a Beginning: My Life with Graham Greene , trans. Euan Cameron (London: Bloomsbury, 2004) |
| Diederich and Burt | Bernard Diederich and Al Burt, Papa Doc: Haiti and its Dictator (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972) |
| Durán | Leopoldo Durán, Graham Greene: Friend and Brother , trans. Euan Cameron (London: Harper Collins, 1994) |
| Falk | Quentin Falk, Travels in Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham Greene (London: Quartet Books, 1984) |
| Hazzard | Shirley Hazzard, Greene on Capri: A Memoir (London: Virago, 2000) |
| Mockler | Anthony Mockler, Graham Greene: Three Lives (Angus: Hunter Mackay, 1994) |
| NS | Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene , 3 vols (London: Jonathan Cape, 1989–2004) |
| ODNB | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography RKN R. K. Narayan, My Days (1973; London: Picador, 2001) |
| Shelden | Michael Shelden, Graham Greene: The Man Within (London: William Heinemann, 1994) |
| St John | John St John, William Heinemann: A Century of Publishing, 1890–1990 (London: William Heinemann, 1990) |
| Tracey | Michael Tracey, A Variety of Lives: A Biography of Sir Hugh Greene (London: The Bodley Head, 1983) |
| Waugh | Michael Davie, ed., The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976) |
| West | W. J. West, The Quest for Graham Greene (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997) |
| Yours etc. | Christopher Hawtree, ed., Yours etc.: Letters to the Press (London and New York: Reinhardt in Association with Viking, 1989) |
I am grateful, above all, to Francis Greene and Caroline Bourget, who encouraged me to undertake this work and then patiently answered literally thousands of my queries over a period of five years. I note with great sadness the passing of Amanda Saunders (née Dennys), who was involved in every stage of the preparation of this book apart from its appearance. As Graham Greene’s secretary, she was very close to her uncle while he lived and then devoted an enormous effort to the affairs of his literary estate, sacrificing time that she might have given to her own work as a photographer and painter. Her sister Louise Dennys of Knopf Canada has devoted a great effort to this project in the very painful time of her sister’s illness and death.
I have likewise enjoyed the extraordinary kindness and good counsel of other members of Graham Greene’s family including Nicholas Dennys, James Greene, Oliver Greene and Rupert Graf Strachwitz. I would like to make special note of my debt to two of Graham Greene’s surviving close friends, Bernard Diederich and Professeur Michel Lechat, who lavished their time on my concerns. Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates has advised me and watched out for my interests over a period of almost twenty years. Richard Beswick of Little, Brown has exercised great patience with a slow author and keen insight over his manuscript.
The list of people who lent their time and assistance to this project is long and my sense of obligation to them is great: Judith Adamson, Nobuko Albery, Marie Françoise Allain, Christopher Andrew, Verity Andrews, John Atteberry, John Baird, Lisa Bankoff, Shelley Barber, Jill Bialosky, Andrew Biswell, Anita Björk, Mike Bott, Carol Bowie, Bill Burns, Euan Cameron, Priscilla Chadwick, Greg Chamberlain, Giles Clark, Chérie Collins, Rowan Cope, Jan Culik, Barry Day, Hugo de
Quehen, Kildare Dobbs, Linda Dobbs, Mitch Douglas, Richard Eder, Jarmila Emmerova, Patrice Fox, Miranda France, Frederick Franck, Alan Friedman, Paul Goring, Deirdre Greene, Dustin Griffin, Peter Grogan, Molly O’Hagan Hardy, Selina Hastings, Christopher Hawtree, James Hodkinson SJ, Alberto Huerta, Ian Hunter, Dom Philip Jebb, Pierre Joannon, the late Aubelin Jolicoeur, David Knight, James Knox, Michael Korda, Hans Küng, Jørgen Leth, Jeremy Lewis, Harold Love, Iain Antony Macleod, John Maddicott, Diane Martin, Lucy McCann, Michael Mewshaw, Michael Millman, Janet Moat, Anthony Mockler, Gilles Mongeau SJ, the late John Muggeridge, Karl Orend, David Pearce, Rolando Pieraccini, Joan Reinhardt, Timothy Rogers, Jean Rose, Hilary Rost, Nicholas Scheetz, Ken Sherwood, Rosemary Shipton, the late Francis Sitwell, Josef Skvorecky, Sam Solecki, Thomas Staley, Hon. Mrs Julia Camoys Stonor, Nicholas and Margaret Swarbrick, Ian Thomson, Robert Vilain, James Watson, Alexander Waugh, Lady Teresa Waugh, Tara Wenger, Peter Winnington and Ralph Wright OSB.
I am for ever in the debt of my wife, Marianne Marusic, and my children Sarah and Samuel Greene for their constant encouragement and their forbearance.
I am extremely grateful for the kindness and cooperativeness of owners of letters written by Graham Greene that appear in this book. The following list indicates page numbers on which a letter begins; where there is more than one on a page they are distinguished as a, b and c:
Lucy Caroline Bourget:
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David Higham Associates for the estate of Michael Meyer:
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David Higham Associates for the estate of Anthony Powell:
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