The book encompasses the most creative phases of Greene's life, when he wrote not only some of his best novels but collaborated with Carol Reed on the films of THE FALLEN IDOL and THE THIRD MAN. Yet this was also the most tumultuous period, seeing Greene's passionate affair with a beautiful and complex American who was then married to a British peer, and the disintegration of his marriage to Vivien. Here, for the first time, is the full story of Greene's activities as a secret agent and the revealing correspondence that shuttled between his one-time boss Kim Philby in Moscow and Sherry in England. In the 1950s Greene was increasingly drawn to areas of conflict in the world - to Kenya, Malaya and to the last days of French Indo-China. But above all, Professor Sherry has succeeded in unlocking Greene's complex character and strange alchemic nature of his native genius.