It was the journalist William Igoe who introduced Norman Sherry to Graham Greene at the Saville Club in 1974, telling Sherry, then professor of English at Lancaster University and author of several books on Joseph Conrad: "There is a man who is a legend in his own time, and who admires your work."
According to Sherry, Greene asked, "Are you a Catholic?"
"Yes," replied Sherry.
"Oh," said Greene, clearly not happy.
"But I'm lapsed."
"Ah, that's better."
Then Greene said: "What I would like from you, Professor Sherry, is a book similar to the books that you did on Conrad. I loved your literary detection and your journeys."
"Well, Mr Greene, I think it's time I did a full-blown biography."
"Oh, I don't want anybody picking over my life," said Greene. "But if I were going to have my biography written, I would choose you." It looked to Sherry as though there would be no biography. But they chatted for another half an hour, until Greene abruptly asked, "Would you like to see where I used to drink with Kim Philby?"
The two walked through the drizzle to St James's Street. Seeing a break in the traffic, Greene sprinted across the road and was knocked down by a taxi rounding the corner.
Rising unharmed, he said: "Professor Sherry, you almost lost your subject there."
"That's not half as bad as losing your biographer," replied Sherry.
"He laughed," remembers Sherry today. "And he stuck out his hand and said, 'So it's on then.' That's how it began, and he started seeing me for interviews. Mostly he came from France to see me."
The first volume of The Life Of Graham Greene, covering the writer's life from his birth in 1904 to 1939, was published in 1989. The second, covering 1939-55, appeared seven years later. Now nearing completion of the third and final volume of the biography, Sherry finds himself under attack from members of Greene's family, notably his son and literary executor, Francis Greene. The rift first became public in January, when the Washington Post ran an item about other scholars' frustration at being denied access to Greene's papers housed at Georgetown University. Sherry says the breach came as a surprise to him, and that in all the time he has been Greene's biographer he recalls receiving only two short letters from Francis Greene - one of them a demand, coming two weeks after Greene's death, to send each chapter to Francis as it was written for approval. "What kind of biographer would agree to such a thing?" says Sherry.
The Washington Post article quoted Greene's niece Amanda Saunders as saying: "It is my own understanding that he never intended Norman Sherry to take forever to write his book and the support he gave Norman would not have gone on for years and years."
Sherry disputes this vehemently, and cites a conversation he had with Greene early in their relationship in Crowborough, East Sussex. "We were off to a pub for a drink; it was a Sunday morning," he remembers. "His sister drove him. We were having a morning out. He had had enough of my constant questions. Escaping, he was happy."
On the way to the pub, Greene turned round from the passenger seat and asked: "How long are you going to take, Norman?"
"Three years," answered Sherry.
"Oh, Norman, that's too short. You'll end my career if you finish the biography. Take 20."
Sherry says he doesn't want to hinder others' work but must follow Greene's wishes and protect his own interests, and that after more than a quarter of a century, he passionately wants to put the whole project behind him.
Like recent literary controversies involving JD Salinger and VS Naipaul, this one raises questions about how and by whom a writer's legacy should be managed. On his deathbed on April 2 1991, Greene signed a one-sentence document reading: "I, Graham Greene, grant permission to Norman Sherry, my authorised biographer, excluding any other to quote from my copyright material published or unpublished." He died the next day, and the document arrived at Sherry's office at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas two days after that.
In the document, Greene added a handwritten comma between the words "other" and "to" - an insertion that some believe changes the meaning of the sentence. Others disagree. The comma "has no sinister connotation," says the film-maker Bryan Forbes, a friend of Greene's, "but makes grammatical sense and was doubtless added by Graham when he read it back since he was always a stickler for correctness."
The Georgetown library, which houses the Greene papers, claims that it has granted exclusive access to material acquired from Greene at the late author's specific request and cites letters such as these from Greene to Georgetown librarian Joe Jeffs: "There are certain problems about my papers. For example, my travel diaries. My biographer Norman Sherry wants to see these before they get lodged in the University." (September 22 1981)
"You will remember, won't you, to let Professor Norman Sherry of Lancaster University, who is writing my biography, have photocopies of the diary material?" (November 27 1981)
"You can show anything that he wishes to Norman Sherry. I would prefer that you confined material for the time being to Sherry as he is doing the authorised biography. Of course, after that appeared - if it ever does! - other researchers could be allowed access." (December 14 1981)
"I know from conversations I had with Graham that he was entirely happy with Norman Sherry as his choice of official biographer," says Forbes.
Greene himself wrote to Sherry in late February 1991, little more than a month before he died: "I begin to regret my decision that you should not come here because, tired as I am, I think it's going to be more tiring answering your letter than meeting face to face. My daughter, I am sure, would put you up for a couple of nights, but unfortunately she is going to be away the entire month of April. Please believe that I liked your book except for what I thought was an excess of sentimental love letters at the beginning. There is a man who threatens another biography, but you may be sure that no one around me will give him any help at all. Of course all my family have been warned to have nothing whatever to do with him."
Since Greene's death, his son and literary executor, Francis Greene, has given permission to at least one other biographer to quote from Greene's papers at Georgetown.
Sherry defends his method of elucidating personality and meaning through the discovery and deployment of facts. "The reason I'm writing a literary biography, rather than just a biography of a man," he said, "is that so often writers - and Greene was a good example - will tell the truth of things in their fictional work, and will religiously not tell the truth when you interview them.
"He said to his sister, 'Where did Sherry get this information? I never gave it to him.' I found it by simply building up fact upon fact upon fact." Reviewing volume one in the Times Literary Supplement, Samuel Hynes endorsed Sherry's approach: "One reads those accumulating particulars with a certain nervousness: is it all going to be like this? Well, yes, it is. Yet out of this vast accumulation comes the book's great virtue - its total convincingness."
Sherry sees himself as remaining obedient to Greene's instructions, and the controversy brings into relief his position as a biographer who is authorised yet independent. "Tell the truth, Norman," he says Greene admonished him. "If it's for me, fine. If it's against me, fine. The truth, Norman, else I'll haunt you."
