Families in literature: Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

An adventurous aunt opens the door to a brand-new family in Greene’s classic

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There is very little in the way of festive cheer in Travels with My Aunt, no winsome children, no hugging. It’s classic Graham Greene – paced like a thriller but firmly located in British postwar suburbia, full of vexed Catholicism, a very British eccentricity and a pervasive, questing sort of loneliness.

But all the best Christmas fiction is about family, and features at least one of the following: a lonely or isolated character (preferably an orphan, abandoned child or a miserable old man); a happy resolution where hearth and home are discovered or regained; and last, but definitely not least, appetising descriptions of food. In its quiet and strange way, Travels with My Aunt fulfils all three.

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