It Was the Early Fifties

To the Editors:

I’m grateful to Graham Greene’s literary executor, Richard Greene, for pointing out an error in my letter of September 11, 1990, in which I quoted Graham Greene as saying he had met Pope Pius XII in “the Fifties.” I omitted “early” before “Fifties.” This omission led David Lodge to comment in his reply that Greene at the time could have been accompanied by Yvonne Cloetta, with whom he was living in 1959 [NYR, February 10]. I’m sorry for this omission. Perhaps I should also point out that despite the admiration Graham Greene expressed for Pope Pius XII, he was unsure of the pope’s chosen name. The sentence in question begins: “I also felt that I had said the wrong thing when I met Pious [sic] XIII—or was it the XII (this was in the early fifties)….”

Kenneth L. Woodward

Contributing Editor, Newsweek

New York City