The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)
Page 65
41 Undated letter to Vivien Greene, but written late August 1939.
42 Letter to Vivien Greene, 30 August 1939.
43 Ibid., 4 September 1939.
2 Enter Dorothy
1 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
2 Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, June 1977.
3 Letter to Hugh Greene, 7 April 1939.
4 Undated letter to Vivien Greene, probably written in September 1939.
5 Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45, Panther edition, 1971, p. 41.
6 Letter from a friend to Vivien Greene, 5 July 1939.
7 Interview with Vivien Greene, 23 July 1977.
8 Undated letter to Vivien Greene, probably written in September 1939.
9 The End of the Affair, Heinemann edition, 1951, p. 48.
10 Ibid., p. 49.
11 Interview with Vivien Greene, 23 June 1977.
12 Interview with David Higham, August 1977.
13 Interview with Sir Hugh Greene, 19 May 1981.
14 Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, June 1977.
15 Ibid.
16 Interview with Vivien Greene, 23 June 1977.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 26 July 1979.
19 Letter to Vivien Greene, 26 October 1939.
20 Ibid., 6 November 1939.
21 Ibid., 4 January 1940.
22 Letter from Vivien Greene, 5 January 1940.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., 24 January 1940.
26 Letter to Vivien Greene, 15 October 1939.
27 Letter from Vivien Greene, 7 December 1939.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 1 January 1940.
30 Letter to Vivien Greene, 14 October 1939.
31 Letter from Vivien Greene, 28 November 1940.
32 Undated letter to Vivien Greene.
33 Letter from editor of the Strand to Nancy Pearn, Greene’s agent, 4 August 1939.
34 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1987, p. 69.
35 Ibid., p. 70.
36 Letter to Laurence Pollinger, September 1939.
37 Letter to Vivien Greene, 21 September 1939.
3 The Ministry and the Glory
1 F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Sinkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 4, HMSO, 1990, p. 17.
2 Walter Allen, As I Walked Down New Grub Street: Memories of a Writing Life, typescript.
3 Ibid.
4 Letter from Barbara Wall, 14 March 1981. She recalled her last meeting with Greene in 1948 at Rules, Covent Garden: ‘I longed to write another novel but was in despair as to a plot … He was his usual enchanting and unpresuming self (though by now the author of The Heart of the Matter) and suggested to me that I should look at the small news items in the evening papers, of the “body found in the river” type, and build a plot around that.’
5 Letter to Vivien Greene, August 1939.
6 Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove: Chronicles of Wasted Time, vol. 2, Fontana/Collins, 1975, pp. 81–2.
7 Ibid., p. 88.
8 ‘Men at Work’, The Penguin New Writing, 1942, p. 18.
9 Ibid., p. 19.
10 Spectator, 8 November 1940.
11 Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge, June 1977.
12 Letter to Laurence Pollinger, 17 May 1940.
13 Letter to Howard Spring, 23 May 1940.
14 Letter to Nancy Pearn about Storm Jameson, 22 July 1940, and also about Dorothy Sayers, 24 July 1940.
15 A Sort of Life, Penguin edition, 1974, p. 150.
16 The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie, Penguin edition, 1979, p. 470.
17 Unpublished diary provided by Barbara Wall.
18 Letter to Vivien Greene, 4 January 1940.
19 ‘That is to say that this book is addressed providentially to a generation that the absurdity of a crazy world is clutching by the throat. To the young contemporaries of Camus and Sartre, desperately prey to an absurd liberty, Graham Greene will reveal, perhaps, that this absurdity is in truth only that of boundless love.’
20 Letter to Vivien Greene, 24 November 1939.
21 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1987, pp. 66–7.
22 Spectator, 8 March 1940.
23 Letter to Laurence Pollinger, March 1940.
24 Letter from Laurence Pollinger, April 1940.
25 Ways of Escape, p. 67.
26 A Sort of Life, p. 58.
27 Pastoral letter from Cardinal Griffin for Advent 1953. For a fuller quotation of the pastoral letter, see David Leon Higdon’s article, ‘A Textual History of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory’, Studies in Bibliography, 33 (1980), 234.
28 A Sort of Life, p. 58.
29 Letter to Vivien Greene from Marion Greene, 3 July 1940.
30 Interview with Vivien Greene, 26 July 1979.
31 Ibid.
32 Letter from Vivien Greene, February 1940.
33 Letter from Francis Greene to author, 18 March 1994.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
4 The Blitz
1 Barbara Nixon, Raiders Overhead, Lindsay Drummond, 1943, p. 13.
2 A. P. Herbert, The Thames, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966, p. 165.
3 W. R. Matthews, St. Paul’s Cathedral in Wartime, Hutchinson, 1946, p. 35.
4 Observer, 8 September 1940.
5 Quoted by Norman Longmate, ‘London’s Burning’, Daily Telegraph, 18 June 1990.
6 Picture Post, 28 September 1940.
7 Observer, September 1940.
8 The film was ready by 20 October 1940.
9 ‘At Home’, Collected Essays, Penguin, 1981, p. 333.
10 The Ministry of Fear, Penguin edition, 1978, p. 28.
11 Ibid., pp. 28–9.
12 Ibid., p. 64.
13 Undated letter to his mother.
14 Spectator, 25 October 1940.
15 ‘The Strays’, ibid., 1 November 1940.
16 Interview with David Low, 24 August 1984.
17 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
18 The Ministry of Fear, p. 188.
19 Ibid., p. 40.
20 Ibid., p. 188.
21 ‘Lightning Tour’, Spectator, 13 June 1941.
22 Paul Fussell, Wartime, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 213.
23 ‘Domestic War’, Spectator, 28 March 1941.
24 ‘A Pride of Bombs’, ibid., 14 February 1941.
25 Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove: Chronicles of Wasted Time, vol. 2, Fontana/Collins, 1975, p. 111.
26 ‘At Home’, p. 334.
27 Ibid., p. 336.
28 Ibid.
29 Malcolm Muggeridge, Like It Was: A Selection from the Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge, ed. John Bright-Holmes, Collins, 1981, p. 249.
30 Letter to Anthony Powell, December 1940.
31 The Ministry of Fear, p. 65.
5 The Destructors
1 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1987, p. 84.
2 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
3 Hector Bolitho, War in the Strand, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1942, pp. 77–81.
4 Letter to his mother, 18 April 1941.
5 Letter from his mother, 20 April 1941.
6 Ibid.
7 The Confidential Agent, Penguin edition, 1981, p. 115.
8 Interview with David Low, 24 August 1984.
9 Letter from Vivien Greene, headed ‘For March 15, 1941’.
10 Ibid., 12 March 1941.
11 Interview with Graham Greene, 14 December 1983.
12 Letter from Vivien Greene, 12 March 1941.
13 Ibid., 4 April 1941.
14 Interview with Vivien Greene, 10 August 1983.
15 Letter from Francis Greene to author, 18 March 1994.
16 Interview with Vivien Greene, 15 August 1977.
17 Letter from Vivien Greene, 1941.
18 Ibid., 1941.
19 Interview with Vivien Greene, 15 August 1977.
20 Ibid.
21
Letter to his mother, October 1940.
22 Malcolm Muggeridge, Like It Was: A Selection from the Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge, ed. John Bright-Holmes, Collins, 1981, p. 317. Entry for 13 January 1949.
23 Interview with Vivien Greene, 23 June 1977.
24 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
25 Ibid.
26 Letter from Vivien Greene, 28 October 1986.
27 Muggeridge, Like It Was, p. 317.
28 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
29 Letter to Mrs Compton Mackenzie, 30 October 1940.
30 Letter to Anthony Powell, 16 December 1940.
31 Letter to Mary Pritchett, March 1941.
32 Muggeridge, Like It Was, p. 317.
33 Interview with Vivien Greene, 23 June 1977.
34 Vivien Greene’s journal for 1978.
35 ‘The Destructors’, Twenty-One Stories, Penguin edition, 1981, p. 11.
36 Ibid., p. 16.
37 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 21 August 1925.
38 Muggeridge, Like It Was, p. 249.
39 Letter to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, 1926, quoted in The Life of Graham Greene, Vol. One, 1989, p. 276.
6 Trivial Comedies, Shallow Tragedies
1 ‘The New Ambassadors Revue’, Spectator, 25 July 1941.
2 ‘Time for Comedy’, Ibid., 11 April 1941.
3 ‘Wednesday After the War’, Ibid., 18 April 1941.
4 ‘Up and Doing’, Ibid., 30 May 1941.
5 ‘Under One Roof’, Ibid., 27 June 1941.
6 ‘Black Vanities’, ibid., 2 May 1941.
7 Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove: Chronicles of Wasted Time, vol. 2, Fontana/Collins, 1975, p. 113.
8 ‘Revudeville’, Spectator, 6 June 1941.
9 Ibid.
10 ‘Non-stop Vanities’, Ibid., 27 June 1941.
11 Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove, p. 113.
12 ‘Dear Brutus’, Spectator, 24 January 1941.
13 ‘Women Aren’t Angels’, Ibid., 25 April 1941.
14 ‘“Bed-Exhausted”’, Ibid., 23 May 1941. Review of ‘Australia Visited 1940’ by Noël Coward.
15 ‘Blithe Spirit’, Ibid., 11 July 1941, p. 34.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Letter from Rosamond Lehmann to the Spectator, 18 July 1941.
19 Ibid.
20 British Dramatists, Collins, 1942, p. 46.
21 The Noël Coward Diaries, ed. Graham Payer and Sheridan Morley, Little Brown, 1982, entry for 9 March 1953, p. 208.
22 Letter from BBC to Miss Cooper of Pearn, Pollinger and Higham, 25 June 1941.
23 Letter to Miss Cooper from Graham Greene, 26 June 1941.
24 The End of the Affair, Heinemann, 1976, pp. 65–6.
7 School for Spies
1 Letter to his mother, 7 April 1941.
2 Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove: Chronicles of Wasted Time, vol. 2, Fontana/Collins, 1975, p. 127.
3 Herbert Greene, ‘I Was a Secret Agent of Japan’, Daily Worker, 22 December 1937.
4 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1987, p. 73.
5 Interview with Rodney Dennys, 22 January 1992.
6 Letter to his mother, 2 September 1941.
7 Ibid.
8 Letter from Vivien Greene, 26 November 1941.
9 Letter to his parents, 3 October 1941.
10 Ways of Escape, p. 70.
11 ‘Memorandum on the Work of the Section of Civil Affairs & Security’, British Intelligence Corps Library, Ashford, Kent. Quoted in Anthony Cave Brown, ‘C’: The Secret Life of Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, Macmillan, 1987, pp. 761–3.
12 Undated letter to his mother, October 1941.
13 Letter to Laurence Pollinger, 8 October 1941.
14 Letter to Miss Pearn, October 1941.
15 Letter from Miss Cooper, 22 October 1941.
16 Letter to Miss Cooper, 23 October 1941.
17 Letter to Laurence Pollinger, 14 November 1941.
18 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
19 Undated journal entry.
8 Return to Africa
1 Journal, 9 December 1941.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Letter to his mother, 7 March 1942.
6 Journal, 9 December 1941.
7 ‘Convoy to West Africa’, 9 December 1941, In Search of a Character, 1980, p. 84.
8 Ibid., 10 December 1941, pp. 85–6.
9 Journal, 11 December 1941.
10 ‘Convoy to West Africa’, 12 December 1941, In Search of a Character, p. 89.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 13 December 1941, p. 93.
13 Journal, 14 December 1941.
14 Journal, 15 and 16 December 1941.
15 British Dramatists, Collins, 1942, p. 32.
16 Letter to his mother, 14 February 1942.
17 Journal, 19 December 1941.
18 ‘Convoy to West Africa’, 12 December 1941, In Search of a Character, p. 90.
19 Ibid., 19 December 1941, p. 96.
20 F. H. Hinsley with E. E. Thomas, C. F. S. Ransom, and R. C. Knight, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 1, HMSO, 1979, p. 334.
21 Journal, 18 December 1941.
22 Ibid., 23 December 1941.
23 Ibid., 1 January 1942.
24 Ibid., 24 December, 1941.
25 Ibid., 1 January, 1942.
26 Letter from Vivien Greene, 30 January 1942.
27 Journal, 30 December 1941.
28 The Heart of the Matter, Penguin edition, 1983, p. 101.
29 Journal, 3 January 1942.
30 ‘Convoy to West Africa’, 3 January 1942, In Search of a Character, p. 106.
31 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, Penguin edition, 1983, p. 339.
9 The Soupsweet Land
1 Journal, 4 January 1942.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 5 January 1942.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Journal, 7 January 1942.
9 Ibid., 6 January 1942.
10 Ibid.
11 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, Penguin edition, 1983, p. 455.
12 Journal, 9 January 1942.
13 Ibid.
14 Letter to Anthony Powell, December 1940.
15 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, pp. 455–6.
16 Ibid., p. 456.
17 Ibid.
18 Letter from Kim Philby to author, 18 April 1978.
19 Journal, 10 January 1942.
20 The Heart of the Matter, Penguin edition, 1983, p. 31.
21 Greene was always alert to stories of sorcery, of the Big Bush Devil, and of evil and magic, which flourished in Freetown. He committed to his journal a story told by Mackenzie: ‘a D[istrict] O[fficer] he knew who against all warnings went into the Porro bush: “If you go there, you get very ill.” He went & pissed on the Porro stone. Down with bad malaria 3 days later, & on twice returning to the station immediately got malaria worse & worse.”’ Perhaps it was this entry that led him to commit to his journal the following idea for a story never written: ‘Idea for a story: the agent who tries to invent a big bush devil for purposes of propaganda & finds himself involved in more & more murders.’
22 Journal, 11 January 1942.
23 The Heart of the Matter, p. 18.
24 Journal, 7 March 1942.
25 Ibid., 14 January 1942.
26 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1987, p. 74.
27 Journal, 19 January 1942.
28 Letter to his mother, 5 February 1942.
29 Ibid.
30 Journal, 18 January 1942.
31 Letter to Laurence Pollinger from Vivien Greene, January 1942.
32 Ibid., 27 March 1942.
33 Journal, 24 January 1942.
34 Ibid., 13 February 1942.
35 Letter to his mother, 14 February 1942.
36 Letter from Vivien Greene, March
1942. Vivien didn’t receive Greene’s letter until five weeks later.
37 Journal, 1 February 1942.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., 26 January 1942.
40 Ibid., 11 February 1942.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 29 January 1942.
43 Ibid., 26 January 1942.
44 Ways of Escape, p. 74.
45 Journal, 12 February 1942.
46 The Heart of the Matter, p. 14.
47 H. E. Bates, The Blossoming World, Michael Joseph, 1971, pp. 174–5.
48 The Heart of the Matter, p. 65.
49 Ibid., pp. 70–1.
50 Ibid., pp. 71–2.
51 Ibid., p. 147.
52 Ibid., p. 166.
53 Letter to his mother, 14 October 1942.
54 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, p. 458.
55 Journal, 8 March 1942.
10 Our Man in Freetown
1 Undated letter to his mother.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Interview with Graham Greene, 25 April 1981.
6 Letter to his mother, 2 April 1942.
7 Letter to Elisabeth Greene, 2 June 1942.
8 Letter to his mother, 2 April 1942.
9 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, Penguin edition, 1981, p. 341.
10 Letter to Elisabeth Greene, 2 June 1942.
11 Ibid., 30 July 1942.
12 Ways of Escape, Penguin edition, 1987, p. 75.
13 Letter to his mother, 4 May 1942.
14 Ibid.
15 The Heart of the Matter, Penguin edition, 1983, p. 115.
16 Ibid., p. 21.
17 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, pp. 342–3.
18 Ibid., p. 341–2.
19 Ibid., p. 341.
20 Letter to his mother, 19 April 1942.
21 Ibid., 11 June 1942.
22 Letter to Elisabeth Greene, 2 June 1942.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ways of Escape, p. 75.
26 Letter to Elisabeth Greene, 20 April 1942.
27 Ways of Escape, p. 94.
28 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, p. 341.
29 The Human Factor, Penguin edition, 1978, pp. 46–7.
30 Ibid., p. 47.
31 Interview with Graham Greene, 11 August 1977.
32 Letter from Kim Philby to author, June 1978.
33 ‘The Soupsweet Land’, Collected Essays, p. 343.
34 Ways of Escape, p. 91.
35 Letter from Graham Greene to author, 27 February 1991.