Introduction

Abstract This book provides an account of each of Greene’s trips to the Iberian Peninsula between 1976 and 1989, giving details, wherever possible, of the preparations, routes, anecdotes, fellow-travellers, topics of conversation, and repercussions of each of them, together with an attempt to explain their personal impact on Greene. This reconstruction will show his personality in a relaxed environment, a context which clearly permits new insights to emerge. The analysis of Greene’s peregrinations through Spain and Portugal will also bring useful insights into the genesis and development of Monsignor Quixote, which as time passed became the personal favourite of his long bibliography. The themes and the setting of the novel can be better understood when set against the trips made in the first phase, between 1976 and 1981, and this study will help clarify some of the detailed background to the book’s inception, together with the subsequent television adaptation.