Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh

Abstract

[Extract] Waugh and Greene were born within a year of each other (1903 and 1904) into highly literate, middle-class Anglican families (Waugh's father was a writer and publisher, Greene's a noted headmaster) Bother families were conventionally church going and, as was normal, disapproved of Catholics.

At school, Greene's only memorable religious experience was a Wordsworth-like moment of trance when he stood silent on the frontier between home and school, 'pulled between hate and love.' In The Lawless Roads, he writes: 'And so faith came to me - shapelessly, without dogma, a presence ... something associated with violence, cruelty, evil across the way. I began to believe in heaven because I believed in hell, but for a long time it was only hell I could picture with a certain intimacy.