INTERVIEWER When you begin to write something, do you begin with a certain character in mind, or rather with a certain situation in mind?
HENRY GREEN Situation every time.
INTERVIEWER Is that necessarily the opening situation—or perhaps you could give me an example; what was the basic situation, as it occurred to you, for Loving?
GREEN I got the idea of Loving from a manservant in the Fire Service during the war. He was serving with me in the ranks, and he told me he had once asked the elderly butler who was over him what the old boy most liked in the world. The reply was: “Lying in bed on a summer morning, with the window open, listening to the church bells, eating buttered toast with cunty fingers.” I saw the book in a flash …
INTERVIEWER Do you believe that a writer should work toward the development of a particular style?
GREEN He can’t do anything else. His style is himself, and we are all of us changing every day—developing, we hope! We leave our marks behind us, like a snail.