Greene, Graham

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Greene, Graham (1904–91). One of the most versatile, prolific, and popular writers of the mid-20th cent., Greene was born at Berkhamsted (Herts.), where his father was headmaster of the public school, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He converted to catholicism at the time of his marriage in 1927. Greene published a book of verse, Babbling April, in 1925, and followed with a historical novel, The Man Within, in 1929. Next he produced a series of thrillers (‘entertainments’) starting with Stamboul Train (1932) and continuing to The Third Man (1950), made into a remarkable film. Increasingly Greene explored the world of catholic guilt in Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), and The End of the Affair (1951). He also wrote verse, travel books, short stories, children's stories, and plays. His autobiography is A Sort of Life (1971) and Ways of Escape (1980). His themes of ambiguity, moral confusion, betrayal, and seediness reflected and appealed to his own times.

J. A. Cannon

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