Chris Hull writes to "The Times" about Cuba

Dr. Chris Hull (University of Nottingham, UK), who gave the talk on New Research at the Graham Greene International Festival 2009 and is an expert on the background to Our Man in Havana, had a letter published in The Times (London) on 31/05/10.

He has been awarded a British Studies Fellowship at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) in order to study the Graham Greene Collection. He is one of two guest speakers at the Graham Greene International Festival 2009 to be honoured in this way, and his one-month residency at Austin will be undertaken between June 2010 and August 2011. His research interest was sumamrised in a blog post on 12th May 2010.

At the Festival 2009 Dr. Hull spoke on “Prophecy and Comedy in Havana: Greene’s ‘entertainment’ and the reality of British diplomacy in Cuba”, and his talk was summarised in the blog post on 22nd November 2009.

Tim Butcher pronounces the last rites on an iconic hotel

The novels of Graham Greene are set in difficult places, at difficult times. His characters wrestle with moral dilemmas in steamy tropical cities, such as Saigon, Havana, Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. He brilliantly evoked atmosphere in settings such as hotels, bars, cafés, opium dens and brothels. Greene conjured a world so convincing and distinctive that critics and readers have called it "Greeneland".

Tim Butcher (above) has been following Greene's trail in West Africa, but there was real disappointment when he went in search of one of the writer's favourite haunts, the City Hotel (top photograph in 2002; middle photograph in 1960s), which the author wrote about in Journey Without Maps (1936) and used as the Bedford Hotel in The Heart of the Matter (1948). Click here to read Tim Butcher’s article on the BBC website, here to listen to his broadcast on Saturday 22nd May 2010 on BBC Radio 4’s “From Our Own Correspondent”, and here to download the podcast.

On the morning of Saturday 2nd October 2010 at the Graham Greene International Festival Tim Butcher will give the annual talk on New Research on Graham Greene, and his title will be “Chasing The Devil – How Greene Lost His Heart To West Africa”. Formerly a correspondent with The Daily Telegraph, Mr. Butcher’s most recent writing includes Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart (2007) and Chasing the Devil (to be published in 2010).

On the evening of the same day at the Festival 2010 the BBC’s senior foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley, who has also been following Greene’s trail in West Africa, will speak after the Buffet Supper on the title “Journey Without Maps”. Mr. Hawksley’s most recently published book is Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About The Vote? (Macmillan, 2009).

Humphrey Hawksley and Michael Portillo examine democracy

The BBC's senior foreign correspondent, Humphrey Hawksley, will speak to the Graham Greene International Festival after the dinner at 8.00pm on Saturday 2nd October 2010 in Old Hall, Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, UK). His title will be “Journey Without Maps”, and he may refer to his investigative reporting in West Africa on the footsteps of Graham Greene over seventy years after our author travelled in Liberia.

Mr. Hawksley’s most recent book titled Democracy Kills: What's So Good About Having the Vote? (Macmillan, 2009) carries the following text on its cover: “The mantra in our Western society is that democracy equals freedom and prosperity. But are we in fact imposing our free-market democracy with the same arrogance that colonial missionaries claimed they were civilizing poor natives a century ago? Is perhaps democracy a fig-leaf to protect strategic interests and access economic markets? Or is it simply that no one has yet had a better idea?

“In his urgent, powerful and engaging new book, acclaimed BBC foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley argues that, in some cases, attempts to introduce democracy lead to bloodshed, poverty and disease. He questions whether democracy, far from setting us free, might actually kill us, and, if that’s the case, [he asks] what should we do about it.”

In addition to Humphrey Hawksley’s thoughts on the subject, you can enjoy a series of three forty-five minute discussions being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 under the title “Democracy on Trial” and presented by Michael Portillo, who discusses the development of democracy over 2,500 years. This morning the BBC broadcast the second programme in the series, which you can hear again if you click here. The facility to listen online to this episode will be available for seven days until 25th May 2010.

Humphrey Hawksley’s recent films for television include "Bitter Sweet" and "Old Man Atom". He also wrote Security Breach (2008), The Third World War (2003), Red Spirit (2001), Dragon Fire (2000), Ceremony of Innocence (1999), Absolute Measures (1999) and other texts.

William Ivory's latest play at Lakeside, Nottingham

William Ivory’s latest play Bomber’s Moon is being played at the Lakeside Theatre in the University of Nottingham (UK), until Saturday 22nd May 2010.

As a very young man, the main character, Jimmy, had been a rear gunner serving with Bomber Command during World War Two. However, we see him mostly in the later stages of his life, as his health is failing and he rarely moves from his chair. He is visited by a carer, who administers his many medicines. In their conversations they explore matters such as sickness, ageing, religious belief and death. The play also moves back in time to demonstrate the heroism and comradeship of airmen such as Jimmy, who faced death and coped with fear and the loss of companions on a daily basis during wartime action.

The author writes for television, film and stage. His recent projects include a film for the BBC based on D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. In 2007 he created The Invisibles, which starred Warren Clarke, Anthony Head and Jenny Agutter, and was screened on BBC1 in the following year. His seven-part series The Sins starred Peter Postlethwaite and Geraldine James, was nominated for a BAFTA award, and won The Edgar Allan Poe Award presented in New York by the Mystery Writers of America for Best TV Drama Series in 2002. In 2009 he was awarded the degree of honorary D.Litt. by the University of Nottingham.

William Ivory will lead a workshop for screenplay writers in Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (Berkhamsted, UK) at the Graham Greene International Festival from 9.30am to 4.30pm on Saturday 2nd October 2010. This practical course should suit aspiring adult screenwriters of all ages. While there will be a certain amount of overlap with the teaching material offered at the Festival 2009, there will be much new material as well. The event will include breaks for tea, coffee and lunch, and attendance at Michael Brearley’s talk, “A (second) Psychoanalyst looks at Graham Greene”.

Full details of the programme are available on the Festival’s website. The running of the Workshop will depend upon there being a sufficient number of advance bookings received by the Festival Secretary by Friday 24th September 2010.

Dr. Chris Hull to study Greene at Harry Ransom Centre, Austin, Texas

Dr. Chris Hull (University of Nottingham, UK) has been awarded a British Studies Fellowship at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) in order to study the Graham Greene Collection.

He is one of two guest speakers at the Graham Greene International Festival 2009 to be honoured in this way, and his one-month residency at Austin will be undertaken between June 2010 and August 2011.

Despite the fact that Latin America was the setting for half of Graham Greene’s foreign-based novels, there has been little investigation into the writer’s representation and views of each country’s politics and wider inter-American relations. Taking a predominantly political and historical rather than literary approach, Dr. Hull will analyse Greene’s Cold War Latin American novels and assorted correspondence related to the countries, where these works were set. He will focus on Our Man in Havana (Batista’s Cuba), The Comedians (Papa Doc’s Haiti) and The Honorary Consul (Argentine/Paraguayan dictatorship). His cross-disciplinary methodology will also engage with the novelist’s views on dictatorship across the political spectrum, from Fulgencio Batista, François Duvalier and Alfredo Stroessner on the Right, to Fidel Castro on the Left. It is possible that this project may widen to include study of The Quiet American, another key Cold War novel, and one in which Greene proved to be remarkably prescient about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Such research could also encompass the 1984 travelogue Getting to Know the General in order to analyse Greene’s friendship with the maverick socialist dictator of Panama, Omar Torrijos.

At the Festival 2009 Dr. Hull gave the first annual talk under the heading of New Research on Graham Greene. His title was “Prophecy and Comedy in Havana: Greene’s ‘entertainment’ and the reality of British diplomacy in Cuba”, and his talk is summarised in the blog post on 22nd November 2009.

Prof. François Gallix wins research grant at University of Texas at Austin

Prof. François Gallix (University of the Sorbonne, Paris) is one of two guest speakers at the Graham Greene International Festival 2009 who has been awarded a research fellowship at the Harry Ramsom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (USA) in order to study the Graham Greene Collection.

So that he may complete his study of the centre’s manuscripts, letters and books concerning Greene and “The Empty Chair”, Prof. Gallix has been granted a one-month fellowship in the summer of 2010. In July 2009 the announcement of his discovery of this unfinished and unpublished manuscript, which was written when the author was only twenty-two years old, inspired a great deal of scholarly and public interest. His revelation led to extensive coverage on the BBC and in local, national and international media. Prof. Gallix’s work is important, because it breaks new ground in the study of the Greene’s life and work, because it enhances existing scholarship and reading, and because there is great interest in the writer within and beyond the academic community, as one may see from the extent of current reading of Greene and the extent of scholarly work on his writing and life.

A regular, respected and popular guest at the Festival, Prof. Gallix gave a conference paper at the Festival 2008 on “The Riddles of Graham Greene: Brighton Rock as a literary Catholic detective story”. In 2009 he delivered a short talk in a talk entitled “The Discovery of ‘The Empty Chair’” in which he explained his progress so far in preparation of the novella for serialisation in Strand magazine. His talk was summarised in a blog post on 1st November 2009. Given the significance of his work and the intensity of interest which it has aroused, Prof. Gallix will speak again to the Festival on 1st October 2010 on the title “Graham Greene’s Unpublished Material”.

Attractions at the Festival 2010

Michael Brearley (psychoanalyst and former England cricket captain), Monica Ali (author of Brick Lane; author of the introduction to Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, Vintage, 2004; lecturer at Columbia University, New York; photographed by John Follain above), Tim Butcher (formerly Middle East correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, and author of Blood River) and Humphrey Hawksley (senior BBC Foreign Correspondent, and author of Democracy Kills; top photograph) will be among the distinguished speakers at the next Graham Greene International Festival to be held at the writer's birthplace in Berkhamsted (Hertfordshire, England, UK) for four days from Thursday 30th September to Sunday 3rd October 2010.

The international dimension will be enhanced by the visits of Prof. François Gallix (University of the Sorbonne, Paris), Prof. Thomas O’Connor (James Madison University, Harrisonburg, USA) and Dr. Frances McCormack (National University of Ireland, Galway).

Amongst other attractions there will be dramatised readings from plays by Greene directed by Dr. Joe Spence (Master of Dulwich College), and the film of The Ministry of Fear (directed by Fritz Lang, USA, 1944) will be screened at The Rex Cinema in Berkhamsted.

Full details of the programme and tickets will be published soon.