From the archives: Alex Hamilton interviews Graham Greene (September 1971)

the golf ball, especially when lost, can mediate new encounters with the

“If you try to communicate with them,” he said, “you are the story. And I’m more interested in them as the story.”

‘The trouble was,’ I said, ‘he got mixed up.’ ‘To speak plainly,’ Vigot said, ‘I am not altogether sorry. He was doing a lot of harm.’ ‘God save us always,’ I said, ‘from the innocent and the good.’ ‘The good?’ ‘Yes, good. In his way. You’re a Roman Catholic. You wouldn’t recognize his way. And anyway, he was a damned Yankee.’

They knew trouble would come but expected it in degrees. Life so often arrives all of a sudden.

‘Dear Thomas,’ he wrote, ‘I can’t begin to tell you how swell you were the other

‘In recent history, Sancho, too many comrades have been killed by comrades. I don’t mind calling you friend. Friends are less apt to kill each other.’ ‘Isn’t friend going a little bit far between a Catholic priest and a Marxist?’ ‘You said a few hours back that we must have something in common.’ ‘Perhaps what we have in common is this manchegan win