David Pearce meets Dr. Fischer of Geneva

At the Graham Greene International Festival in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, England, UK) on the morning of Sunday 4th October 2009 David Pearce gave a characteristically entertaining and enlightening talk on "Dr. Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party and coming to terms with terrorism".

In this novel, argued David Pearce, Greene writes a story which is compact, which has great economy and composure. It is a mature statement from the writer, whose daughter Caroline was present at the moment of creation, namely a dinner on Christmas Eve with grandsons there too. The plot is simple, uncluttered and static, yet ideas twist and turn. The author recycles and reinvents everything: names, characters, situations. It is a love story, but also a tale of loneliness and emptiness. The thought is offered that, if love and benevolence are taken away, there is nothing to choose between God and Satan. The final joke is that death may provide a respite, yet we are frightened of it. The last enemy, however, is not death; it is undeath, not being able to remove oneself from the nightmare. There is infinite longing in this novel: it celebrates love and hope; it is witty and perceptive, but never sentimental and it offers the possibility of happiness. David Pearce added that, if he were still an English master at Berkhamsted School, he would make this book compulsory reading.

Prof. Cedric Watts (University of Sussex, UK), author of A Preface to Greene (Longman, 1997) and a regular guest speaker at Festivals, rose from his place in Deans’ Hall to tell the audience that in the light of David’s talk he needed to rewrite his own book!

David Pearce is a Trustee and co-founder of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, and was Festival director for four years.

Karas' zither music flavours Austrian Dinner in Heart of Greeneland

At the Graham Greene International Festival on the evening of Saturday 3rd October 2009 the guests at the Austrian Dinner in Old Hall at Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, England, UK) were treated to Wiener Schnitzel, Sachertorte and a selection of Austrian wines. Dinner was followed by a selection of Anton Karas' music for the film of The Third Man (directed by Carol Reed, UK, 1949) played on the zither by Cornelia Mayer (above) and introduced by the film historian Dr. Brigitte Timmermann.

The Festival director, Dermot Gilvary, welcomed the Deputy Mayor of Dacorum, Cllr. Roger Taylor, the Mayor of Berkhamsted, Cllr. David Collins, and the Lady Mayoress, Elaine Collins (who is a trustee of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust), the President of the Old Berkhamstedians, Natasha Charlton.

He gave thanks to Mark Steed (Principal, Berkhamsted School) for his generous hospitality, to the members of the local council and other organisations for their help and cooperation, to the Festival secretary Colin Garrett for his immense organisation, to Peter Gieler (general secretary of the Anglo-Austrian Society) for his society's generous sponsorship of Cornelia Mayer's appearances, to the Trustees for their unswerving support, to the many guest speakers whose quality so enriched the four-day event and to the public who come from near and far to support the Festival and to make it such an exciting and thriving event.

Dr. Charles Drazin on "The Oklahoma Kid"

After the Birthday Toast at the Graham Greene International Festival on the evening of Saturday 3rd October 2009 Dr. Charles Drazin spoke on "The Oklahoma Kid", or Holly Martins in the film of The Third Man (directed by Carol Reed, UK, 1949). He offered a sympathetic portrait of Holly Martins, the writer of "Westerns" and amateur investigator.

Harry Lime, Dr. Drazin argued, has stolen the show for sixty years. He enters the film two-thirds the way through and takes part in only one big dialogue, yet everyone talks about him. Like Harry, the city of Vienna is beautiful and seductive, and both take the audience’s attention away from Holly Martins. Holly is not the brightest pin in the box, and not a very efficient detective. He is painfully lacking in confidence, and anyone whose closest friend is Harry Lime is not well-off for friends. At the end of the film he is not lucky in love either. Sophisticated people do not recognise him. Some cannot remember his name, or call him by the wrong name. While Kurtz tries his hand at flattery, Sergeant Paine’s good opinion of Holly’s books is not enough to feed his low self-esteem. Holly says of himself: “I’m just a hack writer who drinks too much, and falls in love with girls.” He belongs to a gallery of losers, and does everything in the wrong way, yet he stands up for all of us in the best way. Vienna has an air of moral abdication, and the only people who take moral stands are those who are paid to do so. Others do not want to become involved. Anna Schmidt thinks that Harry is dead, and the question of whether he was murdered or not does not matter to her. However, Holly’s moral antenna is still intact, as his scenes with Crabbin (at the Hotel Sacher) and Lime (on the Great Wheel) show. So he is a very important character in the story. He thinks about right and wrong, and he makes moral choices. His faith in humanity is paradoxically justified by Anna’s rejection of him.

Dr. Drazin lectures in Film Studies at Queen Mary College in the University of London. His publications include In Search of the Third Man (1999), Korda: Britain's Only Movie Mogul (2002), The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s (1998) and The Man Who Outshone the Sun King: Ambition, Triumph and Treachery in the Reign of Louis XIV (2008).

Kate Adie praises the soldiers and remembers the foundlings

In Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK), on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd October 2009 at the Graham Greene International Festival, the writer and journalist Kate Adie gave a highly professional and witty talk titled “Into Danger”, in which she spoke about her life and work as a reporter who, like Greene, ventured into difficult places often during a time of war.

Kate informed her attentive audience that journalists were assigned to their work on the same principle as a taxi driver finds his next fare. An event happens, and the first journalist in the queue is assigned to cover the story, whether it is the outbreak of war or the beginning of Crufts’ dog show.

She explained that being a journalist in a conflict zone was less dangerous than one might suppose. A journalist’s responsibility was to stay clear of trouble, and to return with her story on behalf of the public. She emphasised the outstanding courage which is demonstrated, for example, by the soldier whose task is to approach a bomb or mine and to defuse it.

She recalled that, as a journalist, she had looked at the lives of the foundlings of The Coram Foundation based in Berkhamsted on the site now occupied by Ashlyns School. These children were kept separate from the town, and in line with eighteenth century thinking they were taught to do simple work which was likely to be useful in service. She offers a brief history of foundlings in her book Nobody’s Child (2006).

Kate Adie is a former Chief News Correspondent to the BBC, and the author of Into Danger: Risking Your Life for Work (2008), Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War (Imperial War Museum, 2004) and The Kindness of Strangers: The Autobiography (2003). She was awarded the OBE in 1993, and won BAFTA’s Richard Dimbleby Award in 1990. She has honorary degrees from ten universities, is an Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Sunderland, and has three Honorary Fellowships.

David Crystal goes 'careful' in "The Third Man"

In Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK), on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd October 2009 at the Graham Greene International Festival, Prof. David Crystal OBE (above) (University of Bangor) gave a lively and informative conference paper titled “Going Careful in The Third Man: a Linguistic Exploration”. His text was enriched by many dramatised readings and quotations delivered in lively and convincing style by his wife, Hilary (above left), and his son, Ben (above right).

David pointed out that, whenever Greene draws attention to a character’s language, we know that he will be a bad guy. If Greene points to a problem of communication, he is giving his characters a warning. Ambiguity is a linguistic clue. Telling lies about language is the ultimate sin in Greeneland. In all of Greene’s prose fiction there are very few language jokes, for language is no laughing matter.

In The Third Man there are over forty references to language, working like a leitmotif and stressing the theme of unintelligibility. Everywhere there are foreign accents, which work as ominous signs. Lack of understanding does not bode well, and Holly Martins’ lack of language is a problem for him --- and for others whom he meets. Style too leads to awkwardness. Names also provide a special sort of tension, and so too do mispronunciations, mis-namings and insults.

In the eighteen months or so since he had been engaged by the Festival director Dermot Gilvary to give this talk --- during which time David had been busy not only with writing but also with lectures and broadcasts all around the world, as we can see on his Blog --- he had read (or re-read) the complete novels and stories of Graham Greene. What a feat! And such dedication to research and scholarship was greatly appreciated by his large and enthusiastic audience.

At the Festival’s book stall the public was able to purchase copies of David’s latest book, other titles written by him. Not surprisingly, there was a cluster of devoted readers who queued to have their copies signed and to express their pleasure at hearing such a well researched and entertainingly delivered talk.

To open the batting on the Saturday afternoon at the Festival 2010 (i.e. 2nd October 2010), we will have Michael Brearley OBE, former England cricket captain, former President of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), and current President of the The British Psychoanalytical Society. His provisional title is “A (second) Psychoanalyst looks at Graham Greene”. More details will be published later.

"In Memoriam": Ken Sherwood (1935-2009)

In Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK), on Saturday 3rd October 2009 at the Graham Greene International Festival, the Trustee former Festival director David Pearce gave a Tribute to Ken Sherwood, who died on Monday 6th April last.

Along with David, Ken was a co-founder of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, and with much regret David noted that this Festival, the twelfth, was the first one without Ken. David recalled that the Trust was Ken’s brainchild, that Ken had demonstrated an intuitive understanding of what works, and that he had helped to create an organisation which binds together the town of Berkhamsted, the School, Graham Greene the man and his family.

He explained that Ken’s energy had provided the essential momentum to the project, for example in establishing the charitable status of the Trust, in becoming the archivist and in founding the Friends. In these and in many other respects Ken enjoyed the unstinting help and support of his wife, Jenny.

The Guardian's Michael Billington looks at Graham Greene's plays

In Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK), on Saturday 3rd October 2009 at the Graham Greene International Festival Michael Billington (The Guardian's theatre critic) gave a conference paper titled “The Plays of Graham Greene”, in which he placed Greene's plays in their theatrical context.

He established that Greene began writing in the heyday of the well-made, West End play, and argued that, although The Living Room and The Complaisant Lover certainly deserve revival, Greene's predicament was his adherence to formal conventions which were being questioned by the work of Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht and the Royal Court school of playwrights. He suggested that Greene's plays are the work of a skilled craftsman, and he commented upon some of the differences in the ways that dramatists and novelists manage the problem of time.

Michael argued that in his fiction Greene also acknowledged the existence of rules, but in his novels he brilliantly extends the accepted conventions. Greene widened the map of modern British fiction and took it away from parochial concerns. He also raised questions about the novel’s inherent mendacity and the unreliability of the narrator.

Michael Billington is the author of State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945 (2007), Harold Pinter (2007) and other texts on plays and playwrights.

At the Festival 2010 on the evening of Friday 1st October at the Civic Centre, Berkhamsted (UK), Dr. Joe Spence (historian and Master of Dulwich College) will introduce a series of dramatised readings from Greene’s plays. More details will be announced later.