Graham Greene played Russian roulette as a bored teenager, joined the Communist Party hoping for a free trip to Russia, converted to Catholicism to marry a woman who had written to correct his theology, and spied for MI6 under Kim Philby, later exposed as a Soviet double agent. This episode follows the novelist from his painful childhood as the headmaster's son at Berkhamsted, through six months of psychoanalysis at age sixteen in 1920, to the faith and darkness that shaped The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair.

We look at how Greene divided his books into entertainments and novels, why he hated being called a Catholic novelist, and how a private audience with Pope Paul VI answered the Vatican's warning about his alcoholic priest. The discussion covers his restless travels to Liberia, Mexico, Vietnam, a ...