HENRY GREEN is the pen-name for Henry Vincent Yorke, the son of a prosperous Midlands industrialist. He was born near Tewkesbury in 1905 and was educated at Eton and Oxford, where he wrote his first novel, Blindness, published in 1926. He entered the family business on the factory-floor, and went on to run the firm while writing eight novels as a spare-time occupation. Of his nine novels three relate to World War Two; Back is the third of these. In the opinion of Rebecca West he was “the most original … the best writer of his time”, while for L.P. Hartley he was “a spellbinder, a true artist”.
