In Search of a Beginning My Life with Graham Greene

Yvonne Cloetta was Graham Greene's companion for almost 32 years. Graham knew the time might come when Yvonne's privacy would be invaded. His advice was that she could either refuse to speak or to 'tell the truth'. This Cloetta has done startlingly eloquently - with the help of family friend and biographer Marie Françoise Allain. What emerges is the most intimate account of Greeen we have. Yvonne reveals the considerate, jovial and tender side of the private Graham Greene. She provides a new perspective on the 'old firm' and his contact with the former secret service boss Kim Philby. She portrays him as a man prone to swift justice against any violation of human dignity: who would quit the American Academy of Arts and Letters over America's involvement in Vietnam and forbid his novels to be published in the USSR unless Soviet authorities agreed to give his royalties to the widows of fallen comrades. In Search of a Beginning is a book to send the reader racing either to reread or to discover the novels of Graham Greene, a writer who truly believed you had to go out and see the world to have anything to write about - which of course made his life more interesting than most. The fact that we can now see his life so intimately constitutes a literary milestone.