Josephine Reid began working for Graham Greene as his secretary in 1959. Alongside more ordinary secretarial duties, she typed Greene’s manuscripts from his readings onto blue plastic `dictabelts’, recorded by the Dictaphone machine, which he posted to her, particularly when on his frequent travels. In 1975, Josephine moved permanently to Minehead and gave up the more secretarial side of the job, but continued to type Greene’s literary manuscripts until the year after his death in 1991. She died in 2012, aged 86.
Josephine Reid’s collection of papers is mostly new to scholarship; she preserved her Foreign Office-trained confidentiality throughout her life, and refused access to both Richard Greene, anthologist of Graham Green’s letters, and Norman Sherry, his official biographer, whose work does not mention her. The hitherto unexplored correspondence contains many details of Greene’s working practices, his movements around the world and his relationships. From Greene himself there are evocative autograph letters which flesh out details of his life not given in published biographies.
