Early years
“Greene was born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the fourth of six children. His younger brother, Hugh, became Director-General of the BBC, his elder brother, Raymond, an eminent physician and mountaineer.
His parents, Charles Henry and Marion Greene, née Raymond, were first cousins, members of a large, influential family, that included the Greene King brewery owners, bankers, and businessmen. Charles Greene was Second Master at Berkhamsted School, the headmaster of which was Dr. Thomas Fry, who was married to a cousin of Charles. Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene, whose politics led to his internment during World War II. In 1910 Charles Greene succeeded Dr. Fry as headmaster. Graham attended the school. Bullied, and profoundly depressed as a boarder, he made several suicide attempts, some, as he claimed in his autobiography, by Russian roulette. In 1920 at age 16 he was psychoanalysed for six months in London, afterwards returning to school as a day boy. School friends included Claud Cockburn and Peter Quennell.
In 1925, while an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, his first work, a poorly received volume of poetry entitled Babbling April, was published.”
FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene
“The fourth of six children, Henry Graham Greene was born on 2 October 1904 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England. His father, Charles Henry Greene, was an Oxford graduate who ranked Robert Browning as his favorite poet and chess as his favorite pastime. His mother, Marion Raymond Greene, was an aloof woman who kept an emotional distance from her children. Greene shared his early childhood years with his paternal uncle and aunt and their six children, the “wealthy Greenes” as he referred to them, who resided in the Hall at Berkhamsted from 1910 until about 1926. His uncle’s house was important to him for a second reason, for it was here that Greene first discovered the pleasure of reading, most notably Dixon Brett, Dete.”
FROM: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1864
As all this sources show, Graham Greene although he belonged to a very powerful family, he didn’t have a very good childhood, rather a bad one. He was mistreated at school and very unhappy. He was a very depressed guy and he had many suicide attempts. As I could imagine he didn’t have a good relation with his mother, and I supposed that with any other family member.
And the most surprising fact for me is that he said that his best six months were those that he spent being psychoanalysed, in London. It’s a little bit scaring and frightening that his best regards were not from his family and friends, but from sometime of psychoanalysis. But on the other hand, it is painful too, that his family treat him this way, and as I see, his mother for example does nothing to make him happy or with some kind of illusion or some aspiration in life.
All this material given is the first we have to know to try to understand his later behaviour.