Jeremy Lewis on "The Other Greenes"

On Friday 2nd October 2009 in the Town Hall (top right) Berkhamsted (UK), Jeremy Lewis (right) opened the first day of informal talks and conference papers at the twelfth annual Graham Greene International Festival. A writer, editor and historian, Jeremy is currently writing a book (to be published by Jonathan Cape in 2010) on the Greene family. He revealed some of his fascinating research in a highly informative talk, as he declaimed urbanely without notes, demonstrating encyclopaedic knowledge of his field coupled with wise and sympathetic understanding of his characters on both sides of the family tree --- “The Intellectual Greenes” and “The Hall Greenes”.

Before he introduced Jeremy Lewis to his avid listeners, the audience cheered, as festival director, Dermot Gilvary, reminisced that in Berkhamsted School on the morning of this same date in October Graham Greene was born --- one hundred and five years earlier --- in the year 1904.

Greene Festival celebrates The Third Man's Sixtieth Anniversary at The Rex

On Thursday 1st October 2009 in front of a full house in the beautiful art deco environment of The Rex Cinema, Berkhamsted (UK), the twelfth annual Graham Greene International Festival began its celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the release of The Third Man in the UK by screening the classic thriller, which was written by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed. The film was introduced by Peter Mikl (above), the director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in London, and preceded by the gorgeous harmonies of Cornelia Mayer (above centre), the celebrated Viennese zither player, as she gave a short selection of popular film scores composed by Austrians.

Creative Writing Award for Berkhamstedians

At the opening event of the Graham Greene International Festival 2009 Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone (top right) launched the competition for the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust's Creative Writing Award 2010 for any writer from Berkhamsted School. In a dynamic and interactive workshop organised by Rachael Guy, the School Librarian, and supported by the School's English Department, Rebekah was assisted by Creina Mansfield (University of Manchester) and David Strickland (University of East Anglia), as each gave advice on creative writing and tips on how to prepare entries for the competition. Writers may offer a prose text or a screenplay. For prose writers the prescribed first words of the story must be: “A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement….” For screenwriters the same words must be embedded somewhere in the text. The closing date for receipt of entries is 1st April 2010. The complete rules of the competition are posted on the Trust's website, and writers may discuss their work on the Facebook page named Creative Writers and Graham Greene.

Festival 2009: Amendments to the Programme

On Thursday 1st October at The Rex Cinema Peter Mikl (Austrian Cultural Forum) will introduce the screening of The Third Man, in place of the Austrian Ambassador.

On Friday 2nd October at 4.50pm at the Town Hall Prof. François Gallix will talk about his recent discovery of Greene's unfinished, unpublished manuscript "The Empty Chair".

On Friday 2nd October at the Civic Centre at 9.00pm Dr. Brigitte Timmermann will introduce the screening of Five Minutes, Mr. Welles with some thoughts on the actor Orson Welles, who played Harry Lime so memorably.

"The Empty Chair" at Graham Greene International Festival 2009

At the 2009 Festival, Prof. François Gallix (Sorbonne, Paris) will give a twenty-minute introduction to his discovery of Graham Greene’s unfinished and unpublished manuscript “The Empty Chair” at 4.50pm on Friday 2nd October in the Town Hall, Berkhamsted (UK).

Prof. Gallix’s words will follow the published afternoon programme, which includes talks by Tom Aitken (St. Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden, UK) and Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J. (Loyola University, Chicago, USA).

Following last month's publication of the first chapter of five in the monthly serialization of "The Empty Chair" in Strand magazine, Prof. Gallix was recently interviewed by Marijke Peters on Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Click here to read Miss Peters’ article and to listen to her interview.

Click here to listen again to the interview on BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme (broadcast on 27th July 2009), when Andrew Gulli (managing editor, Strand) and Prof. Cedric Watts (Sussex Univerity) were interviewed.

Prof. Gallix will speak at greater length upon Greene's unpublished work in a full talk at the Festival in 2010, by which time each of the five chapters of "The Empty Chair" will have been published.

Click here to read Alison Flood's article on "The Empty Chair" in "The Guardian" newspaper.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide investigates "The Empty Chair"

Greene’s avid readers will be well aware that Prof. François Gallix’s discovery of Graham Greene’s unfinished and unpublished manuscript "The Empty Chair" (1926) is being issued in five monthly episodes by Strand magazine.

Recently Prof. Gallix was interviewed by Marijke Peters on Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW), and subsequently she wrote about Greene and Gallix for RNW's website.

Click here to read Miss Peters’ article and to listen to her interview, which lasts for 3 minutes and 7 seconds.

BBC's Humphrey Hawksley's Journey Without Maps

Graham Greene has been much in the news recently, and, if you have missed anything by Humphrey Hawksley (BBC World Affairs Correspondent) about West Africa, here is your chance to catch up.

Greene's Journey without Maps (1935) follows the writer’s journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia. He ran into drunken politicians, war lords, Christian missionaries, secret societies and chiefs with total power over their villages. The book questions the intentions of the West in Africa, and asks overarching questions. What were the whites --- as Greene then called the West --- actually doing there? Were they destined to failure? And would Africa always have the last “say”? In the last ten years --- with Britain taking the lead --- the West has intervened in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Humphrey Hawksley has retraced Greene's journey and reported on whether eighty years later the West's presence in Africa has changed, and to see what has changed and what has not.

Click here to listen again to Humphrey Hawksley’s report which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday 30th July 2009. The recording is timed at 8.45am, and lasts for 3 minutes 46 seconds.

Click here to watch Humphrey Hawksley’s film “Dancing with the Devil” in the series “Our World”. The film has been televised at various times this weekend on BBC News 24 and previously on BBC America.

Click here to read the report on the BBC news website.

Click here to view the website of Humphrey Hawksley, who may be able to visit the Graham Greene International Festival in October 2010, if his schedule permits.