The situation was exacerbated and eased by Greene’s penchant for prostitutes and a series of affairs; the dynamics of these were of a piece with a man whose view of the world was far from black-and-white. This was the envy of writers without his diligence and his increasing flair for work as yet far from bestselling but – as with Stamboul Train – certainly the stuff of Hollywood options. A prolific journalist, he was often abroad, with notable trips around Mexico and Liberia.Anybody who ever had any dealings with Greene found life heightened by a man forever seeking to alleviate ennui. Life was tough, made all the more so with the arrival of two children, and for a while they holed up in Chipping Camden, from which they moved, via Oxford, to a smart house on Clapham Common’s North Side. Fortune soon shone brightly with the success of Graham Greene’s first published novel, The Man Within (1929), and dulled with the failure of the next two (never reprinted) He had by now made bold to leave The Times. Afterwards, Greene opened a letter from Vivien’s mother – and, without showing his bride, threw away its thoughts upon sexual technique.He called her “pussy” and she called him “tiger”. All were struck by the affection they showed for each other, and by Vivien’s collection of Victorian dolls.

They finally married in 1927, in Hampstead, where Vivien’s now-separated mother was living. He loathed Nottingham (“this town makes one want a mental and physical bath every quarter of an hour”). He left it after three months and was now a Catholic; at which, in London, he was promptly offered work on a Methodist weekly, from which dilemma he was rescued by a post at The Times.He was determined to write, spurred by the prospect of marriage, however trepidatious that made him. He jettisoned that plan after falling out with a fellow-clerk.So it was that Graham Greene took a tutorial job in a Midlands village, and then found work on a Nottingham newspaper while keeping The Times within his sights.

None the less, Greene’s willingness both to become a Catholic and to suggest that sex need not be a part of their union is as much part of a nature which was prone to extremes as was his almost taking a job with a tobacco company which would have duly sent him to China. Even for the recipient, gossip is more enduring than professions of love, for tittle-tattle offers greater variety than any ardent suitor can muster, especially if he chooses to write three times a day. There is perhaps no need to trace at any length the 1,000-letter path by which he pursued her after initial rebuttal. If, however, one has to characterise Greene upon the yellowing thumbnail sported by many of his characters, it is to say that in him jostled a sense of determination to produce dozens of books and a craving for distraction from the task; one fuelled the other.Towards the end of his Oxford years he was unsettled and it is fair to say that had Vivien been a Buddhist, he would have explored Buddhism. The complexity of Greene’s psychology – and of any marriage – is such that many commentators, eager to nail down the matter and pass on to the next subject, have come up with some wild theories. Such was her faith that, later, Greene too would surrender his atheism. I was miserable and grew to hate the impermanence of our life and to long above all for a settled home.” A refuge was her grandparents’ home above the Avon Gorge at Clifton.To her mother’s chagrin, but presumably to Chesterton’s delight, Vivien became a Catholic at 17.