TO ANTHONY BURGESS

According to Andrew Biswell, the quarrel between Greene and Burgess was rooted in Burgess’s belief that Greene, whom he had venerated, did not take him very seriously. Burgess reviewed most of Greene’s work from 1961, and, as he said in April 1991, ‘never gave him a review less than almost fawningly laudatory’. Greene did not reciprocate, and by 1988 Burgess was conscious of the slight.²³His public outbursts were soon reported to Greene, who wrote two letters on the same day ending the friendship. It is interesting that apart from personal and literary matters, the first of Greene’s letters contains what appears to be a public declaration that his correspondence with Philby was vetted by security agencies on both sides – in fact, his correspondence with Philby was passed on to MI6 though his brother-in-law Rodney Dennys.

La Résidence des Fleurs | Avenue Pasteur | 06600 Antibes
|June 13 ’88

My dear Anthony Burgess,

I hear you have been attacking me rather severely on the French television programme Apostrophes because of my great age & in the French magazine Lire because of my correspondence with my friend Kim Philby.

I know how difficult it is to avoid inaccuracies when one becomes involved in journalism, but as you thought it relevant to attack me because of my age (I don’t see the point) you should have checked your facts. I happen to be 83 not 86 & I trust that you will safely reach that age too.

In Lire you seem to have been quoted as writing that I had been in almost daily correspondence with Philby before his death. In fact I received ten letters from him in the course of nearly 20 years. You must be very naïf if you believe our letters were clandestine on either side. Were you misinformed or have you caught the common disease in journalism of dramatizing at the cost of truth?

Never mind. I admired your three earliest novels & I remember with pleasure your essay on my work in your collection Urgent Copy, your article on me last May in the Sunday Telegraph& the novel (not one of your best) which you dedicated to me.

Yours,
Graham Greene

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 780