A remarkable group portrait of one English family -- the famed intriguing and pioneering Greenes.
In the early years of the last century two brothers Charles and Edward Greene settled in Berkhamsted a small country town thirty miles from London. There they were to found a remarkable dynasty -- fathering twelve children between them -- each of whom were to lead varied well-documented and extraordinary lives.
This book explores for the first time this generation of the Greene family in colourful detail -- their relationships and shared history and their lives -- as explorers writers doctors spies politicians and much more. There is Graham one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century; Hugh the Daily Telegraphs Berlin correspondent in the years leading up to WWII and later Director-General of the BBC; Raymond a brilliant mountaineer and medical man
who took part in the 1933 Everest expedition; their sister Elisabeth MI6 agent enlisting family and friends into the secret service; cousin Ben a pacifist and Labour Party activist who was interned in 1940 at the same time as Oswald Mosley; his sister Barbara who spent the war in Germany; and their younger brother Felix a pioneer of radio journalism and apologist for Communist China who moved to a commune in California with his cousin Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley; and Herbert the black sheep of the family fantasist and amateur spy.
Interlacing biography history high adventure and scenes from literary life Shades of Greene provides a riveting insight into the self-confident enterprising upper middle-class English world that flourished between the 1920s and the 1970s: and into a truly remarkable tribe.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
