This is the second, weighty (560 pages) volume of Sherry's biography, of which a third volume is still to come. One might not think Greene a considerable enough artist to merit so many pages of such close scrutiny. As a writer he was very much of his time, catching with eerie accuracy, the uncertainty and edginess of the 1930s and the grimness and griminess of the 1940s and 50s. What he termed his "entertainments" - A Gun for, Sale, The Ministry of Fear, Travels with My Aunt - are still entertaining, but who now takes seriously the "serious" novels - The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory, A Burnt Out Case - with their peculiar brand of schoolboy romanticism disguised as Catholic soul searching (one can almost hear the monsignors reaching for their pens)? Yet Greene the man does emerge from Sherry's portrait of his middle years as a fascinating, not to say mesmerising, figure selfish, troubled mephistophelian, playful, loving, brutal, in flight always from the Hound of Heaven, and often frolicking with the Hound of Hell. At the heart of this volume is an account of his "grotesque" (Greene's own word) love life, involving one wife and two lovers, with numerous anonymous prostitutes and one night stands on the side. Most significant was hiss affair with the American Catherine Walston, beautiful, fascinating, erotically adventurous, and inextricably married. The End of the Affair, Greene's finest novel (well nigh ruined, however, by a ridiculous ending loaded with queasy religiosity and a couple of miracles), is a meticulously detailed portrait of this affair - he gave the manuscript to Catherine so that she might check it for accuracy. The latter half of the biography follows Greene on his travels to various war zones and leper colonies. This is a wonderful book, as entertaining as - and somewhat better written than - many of Greene's own novels.