Creative Writing Award Winners, April 2010

The winners of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards for April 2010 are:

Best Fiction: Cathy Hogan (Kilkenny, Ireland)

Best Screenplay: Susan Shemtob (Hertfordshire, England)

Best Under 21 Writer: Rebecca Barrow (Wiltshire, England)

Best Berkhamstedian: Sid Sagar (Hertfordshire, England)

Best Old Berkhamstedian: Anne Chinneck (Devon, England)

Prizes will be presented by the guest speakers, Michael Brearley OBE and Monica Ali, at the Graham Greene International Festival in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK) on the afternoon of Saturday 2nd October 2010.

The judges would like to thank all the entrants for their excellent efforts and fine writing. There were many interesting and individual texts, and a great range of styles and subject matter, allied to abundant enthusiasm and impressive commitment to the project. Although Awards were not made in the categories of Travel and Thriller writing, nevertheless the entries were a credit to the writers in all instances.

The titles (or starting-points) for the Awards in April 2011 will be released at the Festival in October 2010, when there will again be Creative Writing Workshops in prose and screenplay writing, this year to be led by Creina Mansfield and William Ivory. These will be practical one-day courses which should suit aspiring adult writers of all ages. Details appear on the Blog posted on 24th July 2010 and on the Festival website.

One feature of William Ivory’s screenplay writing course will be a practical exercise to write film scenes drawn from the first chapter of Greene’s novel Brighton Rock, part one, section one: “Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him....” This exercise will provide a link to Rowan Joffé’s illustrated talk “The Re-imagining of Brighton Rock”, when he will talk about his new film (starring Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Helen Mirren) at the Festival at 11.30am on the following morning, Sunday 3rd October 2010.

Prof. Neil Sinyard forced to cancel Festival talk

Prof. Neil Sinyard (University of Hull, UK) is unfortunately indisposed after an accident, and his talk, scheduled for 11.30am on Sunday 3rd October 2010 at the Graham Greene International Festival, is cancelled. His place will be taken by Rowan Joffé, the writer and director of the new film of Brighton Rock (2010).

Trustees and Friends will want to wish Prof. Sinyard a speedy recovery.

Slightly Foxed issues limited edition of Graham Greene's "A Sort of Life"

Graham Greene’s A Sort of Life will be published by Slightly Foxed in a new, limited edition of 2,000 copies as a pocket hardback with a Preface by Frances Donnelly on 2nd September 2010.

A Sort of Life was originally published in 1971, and is the first of two autobiographical texts by Graham Greene, who once said that writing this memoir of his early years was in the nature of a psychoanalysis: “I made a long journey through time and I was one of my characters.”

Slightly Foxed tells us: “Certainly the younger self that emerges is as complex and intriguing as any of those he created in his novels. Greene grew up in Berkhamsted among a large colony of Greenes, and he attended Berkhamsted School, where his father was headmaster. As it turned out, the conflicting loyalties this produced, combined with the secrecy and subterfuge encouraged by the school’s puritanical regime, were the perfect grounding for the spy - and the novelist - he was to become. But the price was high. By the time he was out of his teens he had had what would now be called a nervous breakdown, undergone psychoanalysis – which was unusual for the 1920s – and become addicted to playing Russian roulette with his brother’s revolver.

“A Sort of Life, first published in 1971, takes Greene through Oxford, the early years of marriage and his conversion to Catholicism, to the point where he recklessly gives up his first Fleet Street job as a sub-editor on The Times in order to write full-time. What marked Greene out above all else was his utter determination to pursue his craft and there can be no more fascinating or illuminating account of what it takes to become a writer.”

For more information about Slightly Foxed and/or to see a copy of the latest Issue, please contact Steph Allen by telephone on 0044-(0)20 7549 2121/2111 or by e-mail: stephanieallen@foxedquarterly.com

Michael Brearley OBE will discuss Graham Greene’s second autobiography Ways of Escape (1980), when he talks to the Graham Greene International Festival in Deans’ Hall (Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, UK) on the afternoon of Saturday 2nd October 2010. His title will be “A (second) Psychoanalyst looks at Graham Greene”. Michael Brearley was President of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and formerly he was England’s cricket captain and the President of the Marylebone Cricket Club. He is the author of The Art of Captaincy (1985) and Phoenix from the Ashes: Story of the England-Australia Series, 1981 (1982).

Creative Writing Awards & Workshops

The judges of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust's Creative Writing Awards 2010 would like to thank all the entrants for their excellent efforts and fine writing. There were many interesting and individual texts, and a great range of styles and subject matter, allied to abundant enthusiasm and impressive commitment to the project. The entries were a credit to the writers in all instances.

The winners of the Awards will receive their prizes at the Graham Greene International Festival in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (UK) on the afternoon of Saturday 2nd October 2010.

The judges are keen to encourage the authors to continue with their writing, and hope that they --- and other writers --- will enter the competitions next year. The titles for the Awards in 2011 will be released at the Festival in 2010.

At the Festival in 2010 there will again be Creative Writing Workshops. These are practical one-day courses which should suit aspiring adult writers of all ages.

The prose workshop will be taught by Creina Mansfield (Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, UK). She is the author of My Nutty Neighbours (2006), It Wasn't Me (2001), My Nasty Neighbours (1995), Cherokee (1994) and other titles for young children. She is now researching for a Ph.D. on narratological theories and Greene’s The Quiet American.

The screenplay workshop will be led William Ivory, who writes for television, film and stage. He is the author of the screenplays for Women in Love (BBC, 2010), A Thing Called Love (BBC, 2005) and The Sins, for which he won The Edgar Allan Poe Award in New York presented by the Mystery Writers of America for Best TV Drama Series in 2002. His stage play Bomber’s Moon was given its première performances at the Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham (UK) in 2010. He created The Invisibles (BBC1, 2007). In 2009 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Nottingham, UK.

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.