Dr. Rod Mengham (Fellow and Director of Studies in English, Jesus College, Cambridge), who specialises in the study of nineteenth and twentieth century English Literature, has published on Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry Green and others. He has a particular affinity for the literature of the 1930s and '40s, and in the Town Hall, Berkhamsted (UK), on Friday 2nd October 2009 he delivered a conference paper to the Graham Greene International Festival on five short stories by Greene. Four were written in the 30s, and one in 1940.
In “I Spy” Rod found an abiding interest in espionage --- surveillance and observation --- as a child’s mind resolves questions of loyalty and betrayal. He saw emulation and mimicry in “A Day Saved”, which combines the mundane and the menacing, and he identified confused identity along with loyalty and betrayal in “Brother” and “The Basement Room”. He found that at the beginning of the war Greene returned to these preoccupations in “The Lieutenant Died Last”, as he imagined Nazi uniforms in an English pub and a battle in an English country house.
Rod’s talk was distinguished by the closeness of his reading of the chosen texts, the meticulous quality of his argument, and the mellifluousness of his delivery.
In “I Spy” Rod found an abiding interest in espionage --- surveillance and observation --- as a child’s mind resolves questions of loyalty and betrayal. He saw emulation and mimicry in “A Day Saved”, which combines the mundane and the menacing, and he identified confused identity along with loyalty and betrayal in “Brother” and “The Basement Room”. He found that at the beginning of the war Greene returned to these preoccupations in “The Lieutenant Died Last”, as he imagined Nazi uniforms in an English pub and a battle in an English country house.
Rod’s talk was distinguished by the closeness of his reading of the chosen texts, the meticulous quality of his argument, and the mellifluousness of his delivery.
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