Cold Greene light of day
In the 1970s, the parents of a friend of mine bought a farmhouse in Scotland from Ben Greene, cousin of the better-known Graham. While renovating the house, they were startled to discover a collection of fascist literature stashed in the barn, and wondered whether the previous owner had been a collaborator or spy. The answer, according to Jeremy Lewis's meticulously researched Greene family biography, appears to be that he wasn't, though he did have a habit of keeping company with the far right.
Ben was an unworldly giant of a man who was interned along with Oswald Mosley in Brixton Prison during the Second World War, after his pacifist leanings drew him into an alliance with an unsavoury group of fascists and anti-Semites. In many respects, he was a classic Greene: tall, emotionally weak, clever, opinionated and political in a decidedly idiosyncratic way.
The roots of this accomplished clan were in trade - first beer (a merger of the family brewery gave rise to Greene King) and later coffee. Sensibly, Lewis decided to focus on a single generation: the progeny of two brothers, Charles and Edward ("Eppy"), who both settled in Berkhamsted. Each had six children, the "Hall" and the "School House" Greenes. They later dispersed across the globe and managed to work their way up summits both literal (Raymond was a mountaineer who made it almost to the top of Everest) and metaphoric (Graham aside, Hugh was director general of the BBC, Felix a pioneering radio journalist and Raymond a world-class endocrinologist).
Lewis is a diligent reporter, and he tracks the cousins doggedly through their peregrinations: dashing with Graham and his cousin Barbara to Liberia, where both of them suffered horribly from boredom and produced books, before racing to America, where Felix ditched radio in favour of establishing a meditation centre, frequented by Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood, in which he sat out the war.
One particularly interesting section of the book is set in pre-war Germany, where Hugh worked as a reporter. There are also fascinating digressions on, among other things, the use of black propaganda, the effects of oxygen deprivation and the development of the BBC. But the accumulation of detail is relentless, and the narrative flood rarely slackens enough to allow for any sustained analysis.
The author also shows curiously little interest in the domestic sphere. Of the 12 cousins, only eight are dealt with in any detail and those "who led quiet, domesticated lives" tend to shimmy off the page. In practice, it is the women who sink beneath the surface, though by all accounts Eve ("Ave"), who is barely mentioned, was the nicest of the lot. Elisabeth makes a brief appearance, ushering her brother Graham into MI6, while intrepid, beady Barbara, who spent the war in Germany and her later life in Rome, wanders periodically into the frame, but never seems to come under such close scrutiny as her male siblings and cousins. It is perhaps not unrelated that less attention is paid to the subjects' emotional lives than to the content of their CVs, though what is revealed is gripping.
Take Felix, who, though brilliant and capable, felt cursed by his mother's excessive love and never managed to escape from the prison of self-interest. At the end of the war he was petitioned by his elder brother Edward ("Tooter"), who had been working for the ministry of food and was concerned about the prospects of mass starvation. He recalled sanctimoniously: "I had to shake my head and tell him we were not yet ready to talk, because we were not yet living this truth." Unsurprisingly, Felix was one of the "useful idiots" who provided positive propaganda for communist China after a few assiduously stage-managed tours.
As for Graham, he comes across as both cold-hearted and self-interested, though Lewis is scrupulous in presenting both the good and the bad aspects of his character. He deserted his wife and children in favour of a beautiful, bitchy American, his goodbye speech including the immortal line: "I shall always like you to see my work and tell me what you think." That said, he was kind to his eldest brother, Herbert, who failed at everything to which he turned his hand, and depended on Graham for handouts.
In his preface, Lewis announces that he will not "indulge in any form of literary criticism", a decision that proves exposing for Graham. Like many writers of the period, he was an adept creator of his own mythology. The components of this myth included the sense of himself as sui generis, a stranger in a strange land, and it was perhaps to perpetuate this illusion that he spent so much time abroad.
Set back in the company of his own kind, he appears oddly reduced. Many of his defining features are shown to be common Greene currency, from the protuberant blue eyes to the ruthless way he dealt with people. What set him apart - the cold, despairing brilliance of his writing - is barely dealt with, an omission that makes Lewis's book not just luxuriant in period detail, but almost painfully revealing of its central figure.
Shades of Greene: One Generation of an English Family
Jeremy Lewis
Jonathan Cape, 576pp, £25
Olivia Laing's "To the River" will be published by Canongate next spring
