Graham Greene was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. He was educated at Berkhamstead School and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1926 he converted to Roman Catholicism, and moved to London where he worked for the Times of London (1926-30), and for the Spectator, where he was a film critic and literary editor until 1940. In 1927 he married Vivien Dayrell-Browning. After the collapse of their marriage he had several relationships, among others in the 1950s with the Swedish actress Anita Björk, whose husband writer Stig Dagerman hand committed suicide a year earlier.

During World War II Greene worked in an intelligence capacity for the Foreingn Office in London. After the war he travelled videly as a free-lance journalist, and lived long periods in Nice, on the French Riviera. He received numerous honours from around the world, and published two volumes of autobiography, A SORT OF LIFE (1971), WAYS OF ESCAPE (1980), and the story of his friendship with Panamanian dictator Omar Torillo. - Greene died in Vevey, Switzerland, on April 3, 1991.

Greene's first published book was BABBLING APRIL (1925), a collection of poetry. His first popular success was STAMBOUL TRAIN (1932), a thriller with a topical and political flavour. Greene's religious convictions did not become overtly apparent in his fiction until THE BRIGHTON R OCK (1938), which depicteda teenage ganster Pinkie with a kind of demonic spirituality. Religious themes were explicit in the novels THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1940), THE HEART OF THE MATTER (1948), and THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1951), which established Greene's international reputation, and which had much in common with the works of such French Catholic writers as Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac . THE TENTH MAN, OUR MAN IN HAVANNA, HUMAN FACTOR among others - are partially based on his own experiences in the Brittish foreign office in the 1940s. As an agent and a writer Greene is a link in a long tradition from Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and Daniel Defoe to the modern day writers John Le Carré, John Dickson Carr, Somerset Maugham, Alec Waugh and Ted Allbeury.

SEE ALSO: Lennart Meri, Eric Ambler

NOTE: Greene's mother was a first cousin of author Robert Louis Stevenson. Another Graham Greene is a Native American who was nominated for the Academy Aeard as Best Supporting Actor for Dances With Wolves (1990)

For further reading: Graham Greene: The Man Within by Michael Shelden (1994)

Selected bibliography:

• Babbling April, 1925
• The Man Within, 1929 - film 1947, dir. by Bernard Knowles
• The Name of Action, 1930
• Rumour at Nightfall, 1931
• Stambul Train, 1932 film 1933, dir. by Paul Martin
• It's a Battlefield, 1934
• England Made Me, 1935 - film 1972, dir. by Peter Duffell
• The Bear Fell Free, 1935
• The Basement Room, 1935
• Journey Without Maps, 1936
• A Gun For Sale / This Gun For Hire, 1936 - film 1942, dir. by Frank Tuttle; film 1957, dir. by James Gagney
• The Brighton Rock, 1938 film 19478, dir. by John Boulting
• The Lawless Roads, 1939
• The Confidental Agent, 1939 - film1945, dir. by Herman Shumlin
• The Power and the Glory, 1940 film 1947, dir. by John Ford
• British Dramatists, 1942
• The Ministry of Fear, 1943 - film 1944, dir. by Fritz Lang
• The Little Train, 1946
• Nineteen Stories, 1947
• The Heart of the Matter, 1948 film 1953, dir. by George More O'Ferrall
• Why Do I Write, 1948
• The Third Man, 1949 film 1948, dir. by Carol Reed
• The Little Fire Engine, 1950
• The Lost Childhood, 1951
• The End of the Affair, 1951 film 1954, dir. by Edward Dmytryk
• The Little Horse Bus, 1952
• The Living Room 1953
• The Little Steamroller, 1953
• Twenty-One Stories, 1954
• The Quiet American, 1955 film 1958, dir. by Joseph Mankiewicz
• Loser Takes All, 1955 - film 1956, dir. by Ken Annakin
• film script: Saint Joan, based on George Bernard Shaw's play, 1957, dir. by Otto Preminger
• The Potting Shed, 1958
• Our Man in Havanna,1958 film 1961, dir. by Carol Reed
• The Complaisant Lover, 1959
• A Burnt Out-Case, 1961
• In Search of a Character, 1961
• A Sense of Reality, 1963
• Carving A Statue, 1964
• The Comedians, 1966 film 1967, dir. by Peter Glenville
• Victorian Detective Fiction, 1966
• May We Borrow Your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life, 1967
• Collected Essays, 1969
• Travels With My Aunt, 1969 film 1972, dir. by George Cukor
• A Sort of Life, 1971
• Collected Stories, 1972
• The Pleasure Dome, 1972
• The Honorary Consul, 1973 film 1983, dir. by John MacKenzie
• Lord Rochester's Monkey, 1974
• An Impossible Woman, 1975
• The Return of A.J.Raffles, 1975
• The Human Factor, 1978 film 1979, dir. by Otto Preminger
• Dr. Fisher of Geneva or The Bomb Party, 1980
• Ways of Escape, 1980
• Monsignor Quixote
, 1982
• J'Accuse - The Dark Side of Nice, 1982
• Yes and No, 1983
• For Whom the Bell Chimes, 1983
• Getting to Know the General, 1985
• The Tenth Man, 1985
• The Captain and the Enemy, 1988
• Yours, Etc., 1989
• The Last Word, 1990
• Reflections, 1991
• A World of My Own, 1992
• The Graham Greene Film Reader, 1993

Other film adaptations:

• Went the Day Well?, cir. by Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942
• The Fallen Idol, dir. by Carol Reed, 1947
• Across the Bridge, dir. by Ken Annakin 1957
• television adaptations (British TV, 1975) of short stories by Graham Greene, undet the title Shades of Greene