Reg Little on new evidence of author Graham Greene’s relationship with his secretary

For 34 years Josephine Reid worked alongside Graham Greene, serving as the great author's secretary, assistant and literary typist from 1958 to 1992 .

Yet she would only make a footnote appearance in his official biography for Miss Reid was a woman who can truly be said to have put the secret into secretary. But then like her boss, she too was rumoured to have a background in intelligence.

The long relationship between Reid and Greene has remained one of the great untold stories in the fascinating and much analysed life of the late novelist. But it will be properly celebrated by Greene's old Oxford University college, Balliol, this weekend at a special exhibition at Balliol College's award-winning Historic Collections Centre, in St Cross Church on St Cross Road.

The exhibition on Saturday and Sunday (11am to 4pm) April 25 and April 26 will feature hundreds of letters to Miss Reid, along with her papers and books, that the college bought for an undisclosed price last autumn.

The valuable archive, throwing new light on the working practices of one of the last century's great writers, is made up of more than 750 items.And in one go it has transformed Balliol into one of the world's most important holders of documents related to Graham Greene.

Sir Anthony Kenny, former Master of Balliol, reflected that when Greene was an undergraduate at the college in the early 1920s, nobody would have guessed that some of his memorabilia would eventually take their place among the most prized possessions of the college library. "He was an unhappy and unruly student, not well regarded by his tutors, and he would have to get drunk to face his termly interview with the Master.

"His literary output at the time consisted of indifferent verses, published in a volume called Babbling April in his last year as an undergraduate."

A deep and emotional young man, Greene himself claimed that for at least one term he was never sober, waking with a hangover and immediately starting to drink again.

It was while he was at Oxford that Greene experimented with Russian Roulette. David Horan, in his book Oxford: A Cultural and Literary Companion, tells us: " On at least five occasions, he walked out of the city towards Elsfield, carrying a revolver which once belonged to a cousin killed in the First World War. 'It was a sodden unfrequented country lane, ' Greene remembered. 'The revolver would be whipped behind my back, the chamber twisted, the muzzle quickly and surreptitiously inserted in my ear, beneath the black winter trees, trigger pulled.'

"Greene's own explanation was his sense of youthful boredom 'as deep as love and more enduring'; he either died or experienced 'an extraordinary sense of jubilation.'"

But visitors to the exhibition will be introduced to a very different Greene, whose best selling books included Brighton Rock, The Third Man, The Power and the Glory and Our Man in Havana.

The ever discreet Josephine Reid certainly believed she was working for a man whose books would endure as masterpieces. "Graham will go on for ever", she says in one letter. And she was in a good poisition to judge, for between 1959 and 1992 she must have typed up about 40 novels and other books.

Her work certainly extended far way beyond the day-to-day secretarial and she was involved in the production of Greene's books. In addition part of her work was dealing with his voluminous correspondence, which often mixed work and personal issues. Dictaphone technology meant even when Greene was travelling he could record letters on to belts for her to transcribe. These dictabelt transcripts form a central part of the collection Balliol Librarian, Naomi Tiley, said her determination to defend Greene's privacy continued long after his death. Biographers, academics, broadcasters and journalists seeking anecdotes and insights into the great man were all politely turned away.

Oxford Mail:
Josephine Reid

When she was approached by the makers of an Arena documentary soon after Greene's death her refusal was unhesitating. "I am sorry but I am not prepared to talk to you about Mr Greene or have anything to do with your project," she informed them. " I only wish I could say this to you in a more friendly and polite way. But there it is."

Greene was recruited into MI6 by his sister, Elisabeth, who worked for the organisation; and he was posted to Sierra Leone during the Second World War.

His secretary could also claim an exotic background, having spent her childhood in Argentina, and worked at the War Office and the British Embassy in Athens. One of the letters gives tantalising glimpse of her involved in the intelligence world A letter about a fur coat from Lt Col Archibald Henderson-Scott advises her to check the lining of his old fur coat for secret documents before Greene thinks of borrowing it to wear in Russia.

None of the letters Graham Greene sent to Josephine Reid between 1959 and 1990 have been included in Richard Greene’s anthology of Graham Greene’s letters.

Despite Greene's reputation as a ladies man (his estranged wife Vivien lived in Iffley for more than 40 years), Ms Tiley does not believe that the secretary and novelist were ever romantically involved.

Ms Tiley said: "They had a good working relationship which became more of a friendship. Through the collection we feel that we have got to know her. We now love her here. She was a steely lady with a great sense of humour."

Th correspondence contains many details of Greene’s working practices including word counts for novels achieved at a particular date, publication details, his movements around the world, his relationships with friends and people he did business with.

Most Graham Greene memorabilia is now to be found at universities and institutions in America. Balliol now has the most important gathering of material relating to Green in the UK thanks to two slices of good fortune.

When Miss Reid, who settled in Minehead, died in 2012, her family approached the college through the book dealer Nicholas Denny, a nephew of Graham Greene about buying the archive.. Then faced with raising a large sum to secure it, a substantial donation came from business man and Balliol alumnus, Neil Record. Josephine Reid's papers and books are now known as the Cherry Record Collection in honour of Mr Record's mother , who as an English teacher taught The Power and the Glory as an A-level text.

The arrival of the collection has already had an important consequence for Balliol. For earlier this year the author's son Francis Greene, gifted to the college a collection of some 800 letters written from his father to Marie Biche, the French literary agent, who became a close friend.

But the two women who were really at the centre of Greene's life were Yvonne Cloetta, his partner in later life who figures prominently in biographies and articles, and Josephine Reid, for so long invisible. And fittingly one of the most poignant letters is from Cloetta who complains of writers giving ' a completely false image of him.'

"As you say," she tells Miss Reid, " they will be forgotten; Graham will go on for ever. That will be his revenge and our consolation."