This collection of essays include several essays from "The Lost Childhood", often revised or expanded, while over a third are collected here for the first time. The first essay describes how Majorie Bowen's "Viper of Milan" inspired Greene to begin to write at 14 - the last, his return in 1968 to Sierra Leone, the setting of "The Heart of the Matter".

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Personal prologue: the lost childhood. Part 2 Novels and novelists: Henry James - the private universe, Henry James - the religious aspect, the portrait of a lady, the plays of Henry James, the dark backward - a footnote, two friends, from feathers to iron; Fielding and Sterne, servants of the novel, romance in Pimlico, the young Dickens, Hans Anderson; Francois Mauriac, Bernanos, the beginner, the burden of childhood, man made anrgy, G.K. Chesterton, Walter de la Mare's short stories, the Saratoga trunk, Arabia Deserta, the poker-face, Ford Madox Ford, Frederick Rolfe - Edwardian inferno, Frederick Rolfe - from the devil's side, Frederick Rolfe - a spoiled priest, remembering Mr. Jones, the domestic background, the public life, goats and incense, some notes on Somerset Maughan, the town of Malgudi, rider Haggard's secret, journey into success, Isis idol, the last Buchan, Edgar Wallace, Beatrix Potter, Harkaway's Oxford. Part 3 Some characters: poetry from limbo, un unheroic dramatist, Doctor Oates of Salamanca, Anthony a Wood, John Evelyn, background for heroes, a hoax for Mr. Hulton, a Jacobite poet, Charles Churchill, the lover of Leeds, inside Oxford; George Darley, the Apostles intervene, Mr. Cook's century, the explorers, "sore bones - much headache", Francis Parkman, Don in Mexico; Samuel Butler, the ugly act, Eric Gill, Herbert Read, the conservative, Norman Douglas, invincible ignorance, the victor and the victim, Simone Weil, three priests - 1 - the Oxford chaplain, 2 - the paradox of a Pope, 3 - eighty years on the barrack square, three revolutionaries - 1 - the man as pure as Lucifer, 2 - the Marxist heretic, 3 - the spy; portrait of a maiden lady, film lunch, the unknown war, great dog of Weimar, the British pig, George Moore and others, at home. Part 4 Personal postscript: the soupsweet land.