Henry Green

Henry Green is a tall, gracious, and imposingly handsome man, with a warm, strong voice and very quick eyes. In speech he displays on occasion that hallmark of the English public school: the slight tilt of the head and closing of the eyes when pronouncing the first few words of some sentences—a manner most often in contrast to what he is saying, for his expressions tend toward parable and his wit may move from cozy to scorpion-dry in less than a twinkle. Many have remarked that his celebrated deafness will roar or falter according to his spirit and situation; at any rate he will not use a hearing aid, for reasons of his own, which are no doubt discernable to some.

Mr. Green writes at night and in many longhand drafts. In his memoir, Pack My Bag, he has described prose in this way:

Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations which go further than names however shared can ever go. Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone . . .

An ancient trade compliment, to an author whose technique is highly developed, has been to call him a “writer's writer”; Henry Green has been referred to as a “writer's writer's writer,” though practitioners of the craft have had only to talk with him momentarily on the subject to know that his methods were not likely to be revealed to them, either then or at any other time. It is for this reason—attempting to delve past his steely reticence —that some of the questions in the interview may seem unduly long or presumptuous.

Mr. Green, who has one son, lives in London, in a house in Knightsbridge, with his beautiful and charming wife, Dig. The following conversation was recorded there one winter night in the author's firelit study.