Ways of Escape

In 1980, Graham Greene published a memoir called Ways of Escape. Much of the books consists of exciting incidents and encounters in his life, some of which led to his writing a book of fiction. Among the episodes he describes are life in West Africa in the service of MI6 (the British Secret Service) during World War II, his thoughts on and use of opium and his travels to Hanoi, Havana and the Middle East. In a number of these reports Mr. Greene was under fire or in danger of his life in other ways. To escape, it was action he was after.

Today, escape is only available through what you can find to do in isolation. No action, thank you, nobody wants danger through activity, there is enough danger by simply strolling about. My ways of escape are through Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert, P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, writing and gardening.

I took this photograph of Graham Greene in his apartment in Antibe, France in the early1980s. The apartment had just been broken into, he thought by the police, lawyer and judge from Nice he had recently accused of being corrupt. He tells the story of this corruption in J'accuse.