Holed up

                  Fuelled by Benzedrine in a room rented in Bloomsbury, London, Graham Greene wrote The Confidential Agent  in 1939 (the year both The Big Sleep and Grapes of Wrath were published)  in six weeks. The apartment featured in the novel, and during that time Greene also had an affair with the landlady's daughter who lived in the apartment below. He was not pleased with the book and wanted to publish under a pseudonym.