Graham Greene recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul that carries the permanent consequence of salvation or damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace, could the novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the world Greene depicts; and Catholicism is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin, and doubt. V. S. Pritchett praised Greene as the first English novelist since Henry James to present, and grapple with, the reality of evil. Greene concentrated on portraying the characters' internal lives –
Graham Greene primary difficulty with religion was what he termed the "if" surrounding God's existence. He found, however, that "after a few weeks of serious argument the 'if' was becoming less and less improbable", and Greene finally was converted and baptised after vigorous arguments initially with the priest in which he defended atheism, or at least the "if" of agnosticism. Late in life, however, Greene took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". Beginning in 1946, Greene had an affair with Catherine Walston, the wife of Harry Walston, a wealthy farmer and future life peer. That relationship is generally thought to have informed