Jeremy Lewis will discuss his new book Shades of Greene at the Graham Greene International Festival in the Town Hall, Berkhamsted (UK), on the morning of Friday 1st October 2010.
In the early years of the last century, two brothers, Charles and Edward Greene, settled in Berkhamsted, a small country town thirty miles from London. There they were to found a remarkable dynasty --- fathering twelve children between them --- each of whom were to lead varied, well-documented and extraordinary lives. This book explores for the first time this generation of the Greene family in colourful detail --- their relationships and shared history, and their lives --- as explorers, writers, doctors, spies, politicians and much more. There is Graham, one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century; Hugh, The Daily Telegraph's Berlin correspondent in the years leading up to World War Two, and later Director-General of the BBC; Raymond, a brilliant mountaineer and medical man who took part in the Everest expedition in 1933; their sister Elisabeth, an MI6 agent, enlisting family and friends into the secret service; cousin Ben, a pacifist and Labour Party activist who was interned in 1940 at the same time as Oswald Mosley; his sister, Barbara, who spent the war in Germany; their younger brother Felix, a pioneer of radio journalism and apologist for Communist China, who moved to a commune in California with his cousin Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley; and, Herbert, the black sheep of the family, fantasist and amateur spy. Interlacing biography, history, high adventure and scenes from literary life, Shades of Greene provides a riveting insight into the self-confident, enterprising, upper middle-class English world that flourished between the 1920s and the 1970s --- and into a truly remarkable tribe.
Jeremy Lewis has worked in publishing for much of his life after leaving Trinity College, Dublin, in 1965, and was a director of Chatto & Windus for ten years. He has been a freelance writer and editor since 1989. The deputy editor of the London Magazine from 1990 to 1994, he has been commissioning editor of The Oldie since 1997, and editor-at-large of the Literary Review since 2004. He has written three volumes of autobiography, Playing for Time, Kindred Spirits and Grub Street Irregular, and edited an anthology, The Chatto Book of Office Life. His authorised biography of Cyril Connolly was published by Jonathan Cape in 1997, and a life of Tobias Smollett in 2003; Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane was published by Viking in 2005. A committee member of the R.S. Surtees Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is currently researching a biography of David Astor of The Observer, to be published by Jonathan Cape.
Shades of Greene was published on 5th August 2010 by Jonathan Cape, and will be available for purchase at the Festival bookstall.
In the early years of the last century, two brothers, Charles and Edward Greene, settled in Berkhamsted, a small country town thirty miles from London. There they were to found a remarkable dynasty --- fathering twelve children between them --- each of whom were to lead varied, well-documented and extraordinary lives. This book explores for the first time this generation of the Greene family in colourful detail --- their relationships and shared history, and their lives --- as explorers, writers, doctors, spies, politicians and much more. There is Graham, one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century; Hugh, The Daily Telegraph's Berlin correspondent in the years leading up to World War Two, and later Director-General of the BBC; Raymond, a brilliant mountaineer and medical man who took part in the Everest expedition in 1933; their sister Elisabeth, an MI6 agent, enlisting family and friends into the secret service; cousin Ben, a pacifist and Labour Party activist who was interned in 1940 at the same time as Oswald Mosley; his sister, Barbara, who spent the war in Germany; their younger brother Felix, a pioneer of radio journalism and apologist for Communist China, who moved to a commune in California with his cousin Christopher Isherwood and Aldous Huxley; and, Herbert, the black sheep of the family, fantasist and amateur spy. Interlacing biography, history, high adventure and scenes from literary life, Shades of Greene provides a riveting insight into the self-confident, enterprising, upper middle-class English world that flourished between the 1920s and the 1970s --- and into a truly remarkable tribe.
Jeremy Lewis has worked in publishing for much of his life after leaving Trinity College, Dublin, in 1965, and was a director of Chatto & Windus for ten years. He has been a freelance writer and editor since 1989. The deputy editor of the London Magazine from 1990 to 1994, he has been commissioning editor of The Oldie since 1997, and editor-at-large of the Literary Review since 2004. He has written three volumes of autobiography, Playing for Time, Kindred Spirits and Grub Street Irregular, and edited an anthology, The Chatto Book of Office Life. His authorised biography of Cyril Connolly was published by Jonathan Cape in 1997, and a life of Tobias Smollett in 2003; Penguin Special: The Life and Times of Allen Lane was published by Viking in 2005. A committee member of the R.S. Surtees Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is currently researching a biography of David Astor of The Observer, to be published by Jonathan Cape.
Shades of Greene was published on 5th August 2010 by Jonathan Cape, and will be available for purchase at the Festival bookstall.
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