IT’S never been easy to become a writer but Graham Greene had an enviably smooth start. The son of the headmaster of Berkhamsted School — and descendant of St Kitts and Monserrat slaveowners — he automatically went up to Oxford in 1922.

There he networked aggressively, meeting established authors including Robert Graves, John Buchan and Edith Sitwell as an undergraduate. He was soon reviewing for lofty publications, joined The Times as a subeditor in 1926 and published his first novel, The Man Within, in 1929. He worked hard but he had impeccable connections. By 1935 he was having dinner with TS Eliot.

This new biography by Canadian scholar Richard Greene — no relation — follows others in not dwelling on the class and other privileges that enabled the author to embark on his career but the man it portrays and the story it tells suggest many of Greene’s key traits evolved in response to his origins.