78-497: The Potting Shed is a 1957 play by Graham Greene in three acts. The psychological drama centres on a secret held by the Callifer family for nearly thirty years. The patriarch of the family is dying and James, his estranged son, appears unexpectedly. He can remember nothing about a mysterious moment that occurred in the family's potting shed when he was age 14. Family members who recall the event are unwilling to describe it to him. With
156-454: A libel lawsuit that Greene lost, but he was ultimately vindicated in the 1990s when the former mayor of Nice, Jacques Médecin , was imprisoned for corruption and associated crimes. In 1984, in celebration of his 80th birthday, the brewery which Greene's great-grandfather founded in 1799 made a special edition of its St. Edmund's Ale for him, with a special label in his honour. Commenting on turning 80, Greene said, "The big advantage ...
234-620: A second-class degree in history. After leaving Oxford, Greene worked as a private tutor and then turned to journalism; first on the Nottingham Journal , and then as a sub-editor on The Times . While he was still at Oxford, he had started corresponding with Vivien Dayrell-Browning , who had written to him to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine. Greene was an agnostic, but when he later began to think about marrying Vivien, it occurred to him that, as he puts it in his autobiography A Sort of Life , he "ought at least to learn
312-608: A "Catholic agnostic". Beginning in 1946, Greene had an affair with Catherine Walston , the wife of Harry Walston , a wealthy farmer and future life peer . That relationship is generally thought to have informed the writing of The End of the Affair , published in 1951, when the relationship came to an end. Greene left his family in 1947, but Vivien refused to grant him a divorce, in accordance with Catholic teaching, and they remained married until Greene's death in 1991. Greene lived with manic depression ( bipolar disorder ). He had
390-634: A "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia , and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland . William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety". Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St John's House, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School , Hertfordshire, where his father was house master. He was the fourth of six children; his younger brother, Hugh , became Director-General of
468-526: A commemorative edition. In 2009, The Strand Magazine began to publish in serial form a newly discovered Greene novel titled The Empty Chair . The manuscript was written in longhand when Greene was 22 and newly converted to Catholicism. Greene's literary style was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction, of ancestry, and of independent life". Commenting on
546-417: A contest for parodies of Greene's writing style, he submitted three entries under the names "M. Wilkinson", “N. Wilkinson" and "D.R. Cook". As "M. Wilkinson", he shared the prize (one guinea) with four other authors. He later wrote to the magazine revealing his identity and expressing regret that his other two entries had not won, "because prize money in these days is free of Income Tax." Greene's entry comprised
624-459: A few. The Nation , describing the many facets of Graham Greene The novels often portray the dramatic struggles of the individual soul from a Catholic perspective. Greene was criticised for certain tendencies in an unorthodox direction—in the world, sin is omnipresent to the degree that the vigilant struggle to avoid sinful conduct is doomed to failure, hence not central to holiness. His friend and fellow Catholic Evelyn Waugh attacked that as
702-646: A history of depression, which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life. In a letter to his wife, Vivien, he told her that he had "a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life," and that "unfortunately, the disease is also one's material". Greene left Britain in 1966, moving to Antibes , to be close to Yvonne Cloetta, whom he had known since 1959, a relationship that endured until his death. In 1973, he had an uncredited cameo appearance as an insurance company representative in François Truffaut 's film Day for Night . In 1981, Greene
780-533: A novel, even though, as a work decidedly comic in tone, it appeared closer to his last two entertainments, Loser Takes All and Our Man in Havana , than to any of the novels. Greene, they speculated, seemed to have dropped the category of entertainment. This was soon confirmed. In the Collected Edition of Greene's works published in 22 volumes between 1970 and 1982, the distinction between novels and entertainments
858-650: A number of leper colonies in the Congo Basin and in what were then the British Cameroons . During this trip in late February and early March 1959, Greene met several times with Andrée de Jongh , a leader in the Belgian resistance during WWII, who famously established an escape route to Gibraltar through the Pyrenees for downed allied airmen. In 1957, just months after Fidel Castro began his final revolutionary assault on
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#1732869478771936-471: A painting he had done, which hung in the living room of the French house where the author spent the last years of his life. Greene did later voice doubts about Castro, telling a French interviewer in 1983, "I admire him for his courage and his efficiency, but I question his authoritarianism," adding: "All successful revolutions, however idealistic, probably betray themselves in time." Between 1944 and 1948, Greene
1014-457: A pastoral letter condemning the novel. According to Greene: The Archbishop of Westminster read me a letter from the Holy Office condemning my novel because it was "paradoxical" and "dealt with extraordinary circumstances." The price of liberty, even within a Church, is eternal vigilance, but I wonder whether any of the totalitarian states ... would have treated me as gently when I refused to revise
1092-632: A revival of the Quietist heresy. This aspect of his work also was criticised by the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar , as giving sin a mystique. Greene responded that constructing a vision of pure faith and goodness in the novel was beyond his talents. Praise of Greene from an orthodox Catholic point of view by Edward Short is in Crisis Magazine , and a mainstream Catholic critique is presented by Joseph Pearce . Catholicism's prominence decreased in his later writings. The supernatural realities that haunted
1170-473: A substantial fragment that was published posthumously in The Graham Greene Film Reader (1993) and No Man's Land (2005). A script for The Stranger's Hand was written by Guy Elmes on the basis of Greene's unfinished story, and filmed by Soldati in 1954. In 1965, Greene again entered a similar New Statesman competition pseudonymously, and won an honourable mention. The Power and
1248-410: A world that is paper-thin". Only in recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul that carries the permanent consequence of salvation or damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace , could the novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the world Greene depicts; and Catholicism
1326-457: Is a 'whisky priest' who, among his other personal failings, had fathered a child in his parish some years before. Now he meets his daughter during a brief stay, but is unable to feel repentance . Rather, he feels a deep love for the evil-looking and awkward little girl and decides to do everything in his power to save her from damnation . His chief antagonist is the police lieutenant, who is morally irreproachable but unbending in outlook. While he
1404-435: Is a trap, the priest feels compelled to fulfil his sacramental duty. Urged by the dying man to escape and save himself, the priest falls into the hands of the waiting lieutenant nevertheless. Though the lieutenant admits that he has nothing against the priest as a man, and rather admires him, the lieutenant persists that he must be shot "as a danger". On the eve of the execution, the lieutenant shows mercy and attempts to enlist
1482-498: Is held by the John J. Burns Library, at Boston College . Part of Greene's reputation as a novelist is for weaving the characters he met and the places where he lived into the fabric of his novels. Greene first left Europe at 30 years of age in 1935 on a trip to Liberia that produced the travel book Journey Without Maps . His 1938 trip to Mexico to see the effects of the government's campaign of forced anti-Catholic secularisation
1560-407: Is no longer maintained. All are novels. Greene was one of the more "cinematic" of twentieth-century writers; most of his novels and many of his plays and short stories have been adapted for film or television . The Internet Movie Database lists 66 titles between 1934 and 2010 based on Greene material. Some novels were filmed more than once, such as Brighton Rock in 1947 and 2011, The End of
1638-465: Is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin, and doubt. V. S. Pritchett praised Greene as the first English novelist since Henry James to present, and grapple with, the reality of evil. Greene concentrated on portraying the characters' internal lives—their mental, emotional, and spiritual depths. His stories are often set in poor, hot and dusty tropical places such as Mexico, West Africa, Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, and Argentina, which led to
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#17328694787711716-507: Is supposedly "living for the people", he puts into practice a plan of taking hostages from villages and shooting them if he discovers the priest has sojourned there without being denounced. On account of bad experiences with the church in his youth, there is a personal element in his pursuit. For his part, the priest has remained on the run in order to serve the religious needs of the poverty-stricken agriculturists he meets, despite his deep sense of unworthiness. In order to save them from harm at
1794-684: Is that at 80 you are more likely these days to beat out encountering your end in a nuclear war," adding, "the other side of the problem is that I really don't want to survive myself [which] has nothing to do with nukes, but with the body hanging around while the mind departs." In 1986, Greene was awarded Britain's Order of Merit . He died of leukaemia in 1991 at the age of 86, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery. Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres: thrillers ( mystery and suspense books), such as The Ministry of Fear , which he described as entertainments, often with notable philosophic edges; and literary works, such as The Power and
1872-579: Is there any indication of the testiness and revulsion" in Greene's nonfiction report. Many details reported in Greene's nonfiction treatment of his Tabasco trip appeared in the novel, from the sound of a revolver in the police chief's holster to the vultures in the sky. The principal characters of The Power and the Glory all have antecedents in The Lawless Roads , mostly as people Greene encountered directly or, in
1950-623: The Batista regime in Cuba , Greene played a small role in helping the revolutionaries, as a secret courier transporting warm clothing for Castro's rebels hiding in the hills during the Cuban winter. Castro, like Daniel Ortega and Omar Torrijos , was one of several Latin American leaders Greene's friendship with whom has led some commentators to question his commitment to democracy. After one visit Castro gave Greene
2028-490: The London Weekend Television series Celebrity Playhouse . The cast, directed by David Cunliffe , included Paul Scofield as James Callifer and Anna Massey , Maurice Denham , Celia Johnson , David Swift , Allan Cuthbertson , and Cyril Luckham . Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of
2106-745: The Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, a time when the Mexican government was attempting to suppress the Catholic Church. That suppression had resulted in the Cristero War (1926–1929), so named for its Catholic combatants' slogan " Viva Cristo Rey " ("Long live Christ the King"). In 1941, the novel received the Hawthornden Prize , a British literary award. In 2005, it was chosen by TIME magazine as one of
2184-577: The 1950s, but in his final years began to receive the sacraments again from Father Leopoldo Durán, a Spanish priest, who became a friend. In one of his final works, a pamphlet titled J'Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice (1982), Greene wrote of a legal matter that embroiled him and his extended family in Nice , and declared that organised crime flourished in Nice because the city's upper levels of civic government protected judicial and police corruption. The accusation provoked
2262-446: The Affair in 1955 and 1999, and The Quiet American in 1958 and 2002 . The 1936 thriller A Gun for Sale was filmed at least five times under different titles, notably This Gun for Hire in 1942. Greene received an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay for Carol Reed 's The Fallen Idol (1948), adapted from his own short story The Basement Room . He also wrote several original screenplays. In 1949, after writing
2340-473: The BBC , and his elder brother, Raymond , an eminent physician and mountaineer. His parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion Raymond Greene, were first cousins , both members of a large, influential family that included the owners of Greene King Brewery , bankers, and statesmen; his grandmother Jane Wilson was first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson . Charles Greene was second master at Berkhamsted School, where
2418-623: The Glory The Power and the Glory is a 1940 novel by British author Graham Greene . The title is an allusion to the doxology often recited at the end of the Lord's Prayer : "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen." It was initially published in the United States under the title The Labyrinthine Ways . Greene's novel tells the story of a renegade Catholic ' whisky priest ' (a term coined by Greene) living in
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2496-435: The Glory , which he described as novels, on which he thought his literary reputation was to be based. As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between "entertainments" and "novels" to be less evident. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. When Travels with My Aunt was published eleven years later, many reviewers noted that Greene had designated it
2574-528: The Glory . The next two books, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932), were unsuccessful, and he later disowned them. His first true success was Stamboul Train (1932) which was taken on by the Book Society and adapted as the film Orient Express , in 1934. Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at
2652-479: The US, who nurse the priest back to health and help him make plans to reach the local capital. As he sets out, the priest meets again a mestizo whom he has earlier learned to mistrust and who eventually reveals himself to be a Judas figure. The mestizo persuades the priest to return to hear the confession of a dying man just over the border, an American gunman who is the lieutenant's second target. Though suspecting that it
2730-481: The agency. Accordingly, he was posted to Sierra Leone during the Second World War. Kim Philby , who would later be revealed as a Soviet agent, was Greene's supervisor and friend at MI6. Greene resigned from MI6 in 1944. He later wrote an introduction to Philby's 1968 memoir, My Silent War . Greene also corresponded with intelligence officer and spy, John Cairncross , for forty years and that correspondence
2808-606: The book on the casuistical ground that the copyright was in the hands of my publishers. There was no public condemnation, and the affair was allowed to drop into that peaceful oblivion which the Church wisely reserves for unimportant issues. Evelyn Waugh in Greene's defence wrote, "It was as fatuous as unjust – a vile misreading of a noble book." Greene said that when he met Pope Paul VI in 1965, he assured Greene, "some aspects of your books are certain to offend some Catholics, but you should pay no attention to that." Many novelists consider
2886-459: The cleric "on the ground of dogmatic atheism", as Greene's primary difficulty with religion was what he termed the "if" surrounding God's existence. He found, however, that "after a few weeks of serious argument the 'if' was becoming less and less improbable", and Greene converted and was baptised after vigorous arguments initially with the priest in which he defended atheism , or at least the "if" of agnosticism . Late in life, Greene called himself
2964-517: The coining of the expression "Greeneland" to describe such settings. A stranger with no shortage of calling cards: devout Catholic, lifelong adulterer, pulpy hack, canonical novelist; self-destructive, meticulously disciplined, deliriously romantic, bitterly cynical; moral relativist, strict theologian, salon communist, closet monarchist; civilized to a stuffy fault and louche to drugged-out distraction, anti-imperialist crusader and postcolonial parasite, self-excoriating and self-aggrandizing, to name just
3042-808: The conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black . Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize . Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949). He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning . Later in life he took to calling himself
3120-513: The criticism. In 1954, Greene travelled to Haiti , where The Comedians (1966) is set, and which was then under the rule of dictator François Duvalier , known as "Papa Doc", frequently staying at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince . He visited Haiti again in the late 1950s. As inspiration for his novel A Burnt-Out Case (1960), Greene spent time travelling around Africa visiting
3198-509: The disaster he inflicted on the Vietnamese. In Ways of Escape , reflecting on his Mexican trip, he complained that Mexico's government was insufficiently left-wing compared with Cuba's. In Greene's opinion, "Conservatism and Catholicism should be ... impossible bedfellows". In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. In April 1949, when the New Statesman held
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3276-524: The earlier work declined and were replaced by a humanistic perspective, a change reflected in his public criticism of orthodox Catholic teaching. In his later years, Greene was a strong critic of American imperialism and sympathised with the Cuban leader Fidel Castro , whom he had met. Years before the Vietnam War , he prophetically attacked the idealistic but arrogant beliefs of The Quiet American , whose certainty in his own virtue kept him from seeing
3354-469: The first two paragraphs of a novel, apparently set in Italy, The Stranger's Hand: An Entertainment . Greene's friend Mario Soldati , a Piedmontese novelist and film director, believed it had the makings of a suspense film about Yugoslav spies in postwar Venice . Upon Soldati's prompting, Greene continued writing the story as the basis for a film script. Apparently he lost interest in the project, leaving it as
3432-481: The hands of the vengeful lieutenant, he now feels compelled to cross the mountainous border to the less stringent, neighbouring state. During this time, he twice encounters the lieutenant - once during a round-up in his village and then after he is imprisoned as a drunk – but is not recognised and allowed to go on his way. Near death after a perilous journey, he is rescued by the workers of the Lehrs, Protestant land-owners from
3510-467: The headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry , who was married to Charles' cousin. Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene , whose politics led to his internment during World War II . In his childhood, Greene spent his summers at Harston House , the Cambridgeshire home of his uncle, Sir Graham Greene . In Greene's description of his childhood, he describes his learning to read there: "It
3588-684: The help of a psychoanalyst, James tries to recall just what happened that day that left him rejected by his father, alienated from his family, and alone in the world. The Broadway production was directed by Carmen Capalbo . It opened on 29 January 1957 at the Bijou Theatre and later moved to the John Golden Theatre to complete its run of 143 performances. Robert Flemyng starred as James Callifer and Sybil Thorndike , Frank Conroy , Leueen MacGrath , Joan Croydon , Lewis Casson , and Carol Lynley were cast in supporting roles. The Potting Shed
3666-596: The hundred best English-language novels since 1923. During the period when Catholicism was outlawed in Mexico , the state of Tabasco enforces the ban rigorously, while many other states follow a don't-ask-don't-tell policy. But in Radical Socialist Tabasco, priests have been settled by the state with wives (breaking celibacy ) and pensions in exchange for their renouncing the faith and being strictly banned from fulfilling pastoral functions. Those who refuse are on
3744-482: The ideas for the novel often considered his masterpiece, The Power and the Glory . By the 1950s, Greene had become known as one of the finest writers of his generation. As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between his 'entertainments' and novels increasingly problematic. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. Greene also wrote short stories and plays, which were well received, although he
3822-557: The journalist Claud Cockburn and the historian Peter Quennell . Greene contributed several stories to the school magazine, one of which was published by a London evening newspaper in January 1921. He attended Balliol College, Oxford , to study history. During 1922 Greene was for a short time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain , and sought an invitation to the new Soviet Union , of which nothing came. In 1925, while he
3900-515: The leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels , and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored
3978-555: The lean prose and its readability, Richard Jones wrote in the Virginia Quarterly Review that "nothing deflects Greene from the main business of holding the reader's attention". Greene's novels often have religious themes at their centre. In his literary criticism he attacked the modernist writers Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster for having lost the religious sense which, he argued, resulted in dull, superficial characters, who "wandered about like cardboard symbols through
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#17328694787714056-403: The lives of native saints to her children, has added the protagonist to her repertoire of Christian martyrs and now agrees to harbour this new arrival. Greene visited Mexico from January to May 1938 to research and write a nonfiction account of the persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico, that he had been planning since 1936. The persecution of the Catholic Church was especially severe in
4134-471: The magazine Night and Day . Greene's 1937 film review of Wee Willie Winkie , for Night and Day —which said that the nine-year-old star, Shirley Temple , displayed "a dubious coquetry" which appealed to "middle-aged men and clergymen"—provoked Twentieth Century Fox successfully to sue for £3,500 plus costs, and Greene left the UK to live in Mexico until after the trial was over. While in Mexico, Greene developed
4212-497: The marginalised people as best he can. In doing so, he is faced by many problems, not least of which is that Tabasco is also prohibitionist , with the unspoken prime objective to hinder celebration of the Sacrifice of the Mass , for which actual wine is an essential. Otherwise it is fairly easy to obtain beer or hard liquor , despite their being forbidden. The unnamed "traitor to the state"
4290-512: The most important instance, a legendary character that people told him about, a certain "whisky priest", a fugitive who, as Greene writes in The Lawless Roads , "existed for ten years in the forest and swamps, venturing out only at night". Another of Greene's inspirations for his main character was the Jesuit priest Miguel Pro , who performed his priestly functions as an underground priest in Tabasco and
4368-586: The nature and limits of the beliefs she held". Greene was baptised on 26 February 1926 and they married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead , London. He published his first novel, The Man Within , in 1929; its favourable reception enabled him to work full-time as a novelist. Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres (which he described as "entertainments" and "novels"): thrillers—often with notable philosophic edges—such as The Ministry of Fear ; and literary works—on which he thought his literary reputation would rest—such as The Power and
4446-491: The novella as "raw material", he wrote the screenplay for a classic film noir , The Third Man , also directed by Reed and featuring Orson Welles . In 1983, The Honorary Consul , published ten years earlier, was released as a film (under the title Beyond the Limit in some territories), starring Michael Caine and Richard Gere . Author and screenwriter Michael Korda contributed a foreword and introduction to this novel in
4524-522: The province of Tabasco , under anti-clerical governor Tomás Garrido Canabal . His campaign succeeded in closing all the churches in the state. It forced the priests to marry and give up their soutanes . Greene called it the "fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth." He chronicled his travels in Tabasco in The Lawless Roads , published in 1939. In that generally hostile account of his visit he wrote "That, I think,
4602-586: The region's northern border as another Mexican state and its southern border as the sea, when Tabasco's northern border is actually the Bay of Campeche and its southern border is Chiapas . In 1947, the novel was freely adapted into a film, The Fugitive , directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as the priest. It was faithfully dramatized by Denis Cannan for performance at the Phoenix Theatre in London in 1956,
4680-405: The renegade Padre José to hear the condemned man's confession (which in extremis the Church would allow), but the effort is thwarted by Padre José's domineering wife. The lieutenant is now convinced that he has "cleared the province of priests", but in the final chapter another covert priest arrives in the capital. A faithful Catholic woman, who has previously figured as reading pious tracts about
4758-402: The rest of the day. His writing influences included Henry James , Robert Louis Stevenson , H. Rider Haggard , Joseph Conrad , Ford Madox Ford , Marcel Proust , Charles Péguy and John Buchan . Throughout his life, Greene travelled to what he called the world's wild and remote places. In 1941, the travels led to his being recruited into MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for
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#17328694787714836-465: The root of much of his writing, especially Brighton Rock , The Power and the Glory , The Heart of the Matter , and The End of the Affair , which have been named "the gold standard" of the Catholic novel. Several works, such as The Confidential Agent , The Quiet American , Our Man in Havana , The Human Factor , and his screenplay for The Third Man , also show Greene's avid interest in
4914-409: The run and liable to be shot. A scene-setting introduction to some of the characters, who are enduring a barely satisfactory existence in the provincial capital, now gives way to the story of the novel's protagonist: a fugitive priest returned after years to the small country town that was formerly his parish. The narrative then follows him on his journey through the state, where he tries to minister to
4992-415: The school as a boarder. Bullied and profoundly depressed, he made several suicide attempts, including, as he wrote in his autobiography, by Russian roulette and by taking aspirin before going swimming in the school pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a radical step for the time, he was sent for psychoanalysis for six months in London, afterwards returning to school as a day student. School friends included
5070-630: The whisky priest acted by Paul Scofield , and in 1958 at the Phoenix Theatre in New York City. The dramatization was The Play of the Week on US television in 1959, with James Donald as the priest. A highly acclaimed 1961 US television version, released theatrically overseas, featured Laurence Olivier in the role. The Power and the Glory was somewhat controversial and, in 1953, Cardinal Bernard Griffin of Westminster summoned Greene and read him
5148-605: The workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage. In early 1930s Green moved to the left politically. He read left-wing writers like G.D.H. Cole and John Strachey ; in 1933 he joined the Independent Labour Party . This move to the left is reflected in the characters and plot of his fifth novel It's A Battlefield . His later political affiliations and convictions were more ambiguous. He supplemented his novelist's income with freelance journalism, book and film reviews for The Spectator , and co-editing
5226-413: Was always first and foremost a novelist. His first play, The Living Room , debuted in 1953. Michael Korda , a lifelong friend and later his editor at Simon & Schuster , observed Greene at work: Greene wrote in a small black leather notebook with a black fountain pen and would write approximately 500 words. Korda described this as Graham's daily penance—once he finished he put the notebook away for
5304-467: Was an agnostic , but was baptised into the Catholic faith in 1926 after meeting his future wife Vivien Dayrell-Browning . They were married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, north London. The Greenes had two children, Lucy Caroline (born 1933) and Francis (born 1936). In his discussions with Father Trollope, the priest to whom he went for instruction in Catholicism , Greene argued with
5382-453: Was an undergraduate at Balliol, his first work, a poorly received volume of poetry titled Babbling April , was published. Greene had periodic bouts of depression while at Oxford, and largely kept to himself. Of Greene's time at Oxford, his contemporary Evelyn Waugh noted that: "Graham Greene looked down on us (and perhaps all undergraduates) as childish and ostentatious. He certainly shared in none of our revelry." He graduated in 1925 with
5460-497: Was at Harston I quite suddenly found that I could read—the book was Dixon Brett, Detective . I didn't want anyone to know of my discovery, so I read only in secret, in a remote attic, but my mother must have spotted what I was at all the same, for she gave me Ballantyne's Coral Island for the train journey home—always an interminable journey with the long wait between trains at Bletchley ..." In 1910, Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster of Berkhamsted. Graham also attended
5538-701: Was awarded the Jerusalem Prize , awarded to writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society. He lived the last years of his life in Vevey , on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the same town Charlie Chaplin was living in at this time. He visited Chaplin often, and the two were good friends. His book Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party (1980) is based on themes of combined philosophical and geographical influences. He ceased going to mass and confession in
5616-463: Was director at Eyre & Spottiswoode under chairman Douglas Jerrold , in charge of developing its fiction list. Greene created The Century Library series, which was discontinued after he left following a conflict with Jerrold regarding Anthony Powell 's contract. In 1958, Greene was offered the position of chairman by Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre , but declined. He was a director at The Bodley Head from 1957 to 1968 under Max Reinhardt . Greene
5694-424: Was executed without trial in 1927 on false charges. In 1983, Greene said that he first started to become a Christian in Tabasco, where the fidelity of the peasants "assumed such proportions that I couldn't help being profoundly moved." Despite having visited Mexico and published an account of his travels, in the novel Greene was not meticulous about Tabasco's geography. In The Power and the Glory , he identified
5772-521: Was first produced in London on 5 February 1958 at the Globe Theatre , directed by Michael Macowan , starring; Walter Hudd , Sarah Long , Lockwood West , John Gielgud , Peter Illing , Redmond Phillips . The third act of the play differed between the 1957 American and 1958 British productions. An author's note in the British edition of the published play ( William Heinemann , 1958) states: Greene never
5850-620: Was paid for by the publishing company Longman , thanks to his friendship with Tom Burns . That voyage produced two books, the nonfiction The Lawless Roads (published as Another Mexico in the US) and the novel The Power and the Glory . In 1953, the Holy Office informed Greene that The Power and the Glory was damaging to the reputation of the priesthood; but later, in a private audience with Greene, Pope Paul VI told him that, although parts of his novels would offend some Catholics, he should ignore
5928-528: Was pleased with the third act and rewrote it during rehearsals of the American production; he changed it back to the original script for the British premiere. Time wrote "The play's emotional power derives from its harassed outcries and silences, from very human bafflements and needs, from a truly serious man's intensities and jocosities alike...for two acts, culminating in a superbly dramatic revelation scene, The Potting Shed , by its writing and storytelling alike, more and more grips and stirs its audience." It
6006-511: Was revived at the Finborough Theatre in early 2011. In 1961, Paul Bogart directed the play for the television series The Play of the Week . Frank Conroy reprised his Broadway role. The cast included John Baragrey as James Callifer and Ludwig Donath , Ann Harding , Fritz Weaver , and Nancy Wickwire in supporting roles. A 1981 television production of the play was written by Pat Sandys and produced by Yorkshire Television for
6084-504: Was the day I began to hate the Mexicans" and at another point described his "growing depression, almost pathological hatred ... for Mexico." Pico Iyer has marveled at how Greene's responses to what he saw could be "so dyspeptic, so loveless, so savagely self-enclosed and blind" in his nonfiction treatment of his journey, though, as another critic has noted, "nowhere in The Power and the Glory
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