Michael Shelden’s revealing obituary of Norman Sherry (4 November) vividly demonstrates just how tough it must have been as Graham Greene’s official biographer, an assignment that would lead to several near-death experiences in faraway places for the great writer’s often painfully dogged Boswell.
I never even knew of Sherry’s existence when in 1983 – nearly a decade after the biographer had been anointed and five years before his first (of three) volumes would be published – I approached Greene to write Travels in Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham Greene, an account of his long and often turbulent personal involvement in film-making, which came out in 1984.
To my great surprise – being neither a student of his writing nor a Catholic, both of which turned out to be to my advantage, it seems – Greene agreed readily to cooperate, which now, in retrospect, must have been a bit galling for Sherry, who can’t have been greatly pleased that his subject was enthusiastically sharing secrets with others while he was still plugging away with his intense research.
Taking the long view, I have to think that maybe this was possibly Greene’s rather mischievous way of beginning to undermine a man with whom he would become progressively more irritated.
Quentin Falk
Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire
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