Graham Greene was born in Berkhamsted in 1904 and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He was on the staff of The Times from 1926 to 1930, and in 1935 became film critic of the Spectator, becoming the magazine's literary editor in 1940. During the Second World War Greene worked for the Foreign Office, from 1941-3 in Sierra Leone. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1966 and a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1969. Greene died in 1991.

Considered one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, Greene was a prolific writer, the author of, in addition to his novels and criticism, short stories, essays, plays, screenplays, travel books and autobiography. His first popular success was the thriller Stamboul Train (1932), the first of a series of novels that included The Confidential Agent (1939) and Our Man in Havana (1958) termed by Greene 'entertainments'. Other novels, such as Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948) and The Quiet American (1955) explore preoccupations with the human condition that reflect Greene's conversion to Catholicism in 1926.