Greene Pleased to Leave Ivy House

A little bird told me that Graham Greene used to live in the Arboretum. Another bird said Gregory Boulevard. With pressure mounting I decided to look into the matter.

Turns out that the Arboretum supporters have it. Greene lived at Ivy House, All Saint’s Terrace, NG7 -  between December 1925 and March 1926 during which time he worked as a sub editor on the Nottingham Journal (in 1953  the owners of the Post, T Bailey Forman, buy up the rival Nottingham Journal and Evening News and then in 1963 the two evening papers merge).

Greene did not have a happy time of it in Nottingham. The day after he left to return to London he wrote to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, his future wife, “Thank God Nottingham’s over.  It’s like coming back into real life again being here.”   He used experiences of living at Ivy House as a model for several situations and characters throughout his fiction. In particular his landlady Mrs Loney, (“a lazy woman who lived mostly in her basement from where she spied on her neighbours”) is suspected to be the basis for Mrs Coney in It’s a Battlefield and for Mrs Prewitt in Brighton Rock. 

Many thanks to Jim Thornton over at http://www.igreens.org.uk/graham_greene_in_nottingham.htm for his handy primer.

In a literary mood,
Alan

Stop the press…
Many thanks to Jim for pointing me to an ongoing discussion he is having with Andrew Schlich. It appears that the general consensus is that Greene lived on All Saints Street and NOT All Saints Terrace as previously written. Please read the links held within the comments for this item to read Andrew and Jim’s debate.
Thanks for bearing with us,
Alan