"Empty Chair": Greene's incomplete "whodunit"

The first chapter of an unfinished Graham Greene novel Empty Chair has been published by Strand magazine. Andrew Gulli (Managing Editor of Strand) and Professor Cedric Watts (Sussex University) discussed the recently discovered novella this morning on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme.

The manuscript, which was written in 1926 when the writer was aged 22, was recently found in the vaults of a university in Texas, and the 22,000 words of its five chapters have been transcribed by Prof. François Gallix (University of the Sorbonne, Paris).

To hear the broadcast again, just click the link here.

Cedric Watts adds that "Empty Chair is remarkably interesting with all sorts of anticipations of later Greene, including not only a theologically-sophisticated Roman Catholic priest but also a fishy and chubby character called Chub". Readers will remember that 1926 was the year in which Greene was converted to Catholicism after a period of instruction from a priest.

Humphrey Hawksley's Journey Without Maps

On Thursday 30th July 2009 from 11.00am to 11.30am BBC Radio 4 will broadcast “A Journey Without Maps” the third of nine programmes in its series “Crossing Continents”, as Humphrey Hawksley retraces the extraordinary journey undertaken on foot by Graham Greene from Sierra Leone across Liberia in 1935. He feasts on sardines and luncheon meat, meets the lightning makers and devil dancers and is involved in a near-fatal car crash. The reporter asks, “How has West Africa changed? Is it better or worse than it was seventy years ago?”

Humphrey Hawksley is a leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs. For more than twenty years he has reported on key trends, events and conflicts from all over the world, including Kosovo, Iraq, and Sri Lanka, from where he was expelled while covering the civil war. From 1990 he was based in Hong Kong, and in 1994 moved to Beijing to open the BBC's first television bureau in China.

He has written various novels, including Red Spirit (2001), The Third World War (2003) and Security Breach (which was first published as The History Book, and reprinted in 2008).

The photograph shows Humphrey at Pendembu Station in Sierra Leone with his copy of Greene’s novel Journey without Maps (1936), and you can learn more about his work and travels on his Blog:
http://www.humphreyhawksley.com/blog/

Dr. Chris Hull: Our Man in Havana

Dr. Chris Hull will speak to the Festival at 9.30am on Saturday 3rd October 2009 on the topic of "Prophecy and Comedy in Havana: Greene’s ‘entertainment’ and the Reality of British Diplomacy in Cuba". He is based at the University of Nottingham (UK), and his research, which focuses on the history of Anglo-Cuban relations from 1898 to 1964, offers an alternative to the plethora of historical studies undertaken along the Washington-Havana axis. Chris studied in Cuba for five months in 1997-98, where he witnessed both Che Guevara’s funeral (after the revolutionary’s remains were discovered and repatriated from Bolivia) and the visit of Pope John Paul II. His academic research has taken him to Cuba and the United States, but predominantly to the National Archives at Kew Gardens.

Chris’ talk marks the launch of what we hope will become an annual event, namely a talk on New Research on Graham Greene sponsored by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust.

"Five Minutes, Mr. Welles"

At the Graham Greene International Festival on Friday 2nd October 2009 in the Civic Centre (Berkhamsted, UK), you can see a remarkable thirty-minute film titled Five Minutes, Mr. Welles (Brooklyn Hazelhurst, USA, 2005), starring Vincent D'Onofrio (above, seated on set) (who also directed the piece) and Janine Thériault (below).

Brigitte Timmermann on BBC Radio 4

This morning on BBC Radio 4 in a thirty-minute programme titled "Vienna and the Shadow of The Third Man" Dr. Brigitte Timmermann uncovered Graham Greene's Vienna, and took us in the footsteps of the classic thriller sixty years on from its release.

Walking through the city, she tells stories which have fascinated generations of film buffs, from the role of Soviet master spy Kim Philby to tales of Sir Carol Reed's and Graham Greene's late night visits to Vienna's seediest bars.

With the help of the directors of The Third Man Museum in Vienna (seen on the left in the photograph), Brigitte explores Vienna's hidden history and examines why The Third Man was initially unpopular in the city which inspired it.

Brigitte (seen in the centre of the photograph above) is well known in Berkhamsted as a Friend of the Festival and also as a historian and tour guide in Vienna.

The programme is available to listen to again on BBC iPlayer until 12:02pm Tuesday 9th June 2009. You may see and read more about The Third Man Museum at its website.

Kate Adie, OBE

Kate Adie, OBE, former Chief News Correspondent to the BBC, will speak to the Festival at 3.30pm on Saturday 3rd October 2009. Like Graham Greene who began his working life as a journalist and who visited war zones as a reporter, Kate is famous for her willingness to take personal risks in the interests of telling the truth about a story. The title of her talk will be Into Danger, which picks up the first two words of the title of her autobiographical book Into Danger: Risking Your Life for Work which was published last year. Kate's talk may allude to the similarities between her own life and the situations in which Greene found himself, but it will focus upon her own work.

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