SCENE OF GREENE’S FORTUNATE ESCAPE
Fans of Graham Greene have plenty of properties to visit where the Brighton Rock author left his mark.
These include a cottage in the Cotswold village of Chipping Norton where he lived during the early 1930s with his wife Vivien. During his time at the property he wrote Stambould Train, which was later turned into the film Orient Express.
There’s also the house in Oxford where his wife Vivien fled after the couple’s infamous divorce in 1948, after which Greene wrote his novel The End of the Affair. This was also turned into a film, starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore.
But the best known property linked to the author is a Queen Anne house at 14, Clapham Common Northside in South London, which Greene rented for his family for five years during the war, before he and Vivien separated.
Many of the local landmarks near the property, which has a Blue Plaque, were included in the book, including nearby St Mary’s Church and The Windmill pub.
The house was bombed in 1940 but luckily Greene’s wife and children had already evacuated to Sussex and he was out that night with his lover.
No. 14 Clapham Common Northside, which was rebuilt after the war, was subsequently split into apartments. Its top-floor two-bedroom flat – where Greene wrote many of his most famous novels – has just sold for £835,000 via website OnTheMarket.com