Programme for Festival 2011

The 14th Graham Greene International Festival
Thursday 29th September to Sunday 2nd October 2011
At various venues in Berkhamsted (England, UK)

Festival Director: Yan Christensen

Thursday 29th September 2011

16:30 – 18:00, An Event for Berkhamsted School’s Sixth Form, Old Hall (Berkhamsted School)

17:30 – 19:30, Social Gathering and Buffet Supper at The Gatsby restaurant

19:45 – 21:30, Film Night at The Rex Cinema
Brighton Rock
(UK, 2010; 111 mins; director, Rowan Joffé; starring Andrea Riseborough, Sam Riley, Helen Mirren; classification, 15)
Introduced by Rowan Joffé

Friday 30th September 2011

Talks at the Town Hall, Berkhamsted

9:30 – 10:30, Christian Hofferbert
'Godless Greene – Changing Extremes in Greene’s Work'

11:00 – 12:00, Professor François Gallix
'Graham Greene’s Books for Children'

14:15 – 15:15, Martin Jenkins
'At last, The Blue Plaque' – followed by
Tim Bentinck
'How Greene was My Childhood'

15:45 – 16:45, Julian Clapp
'Brighton Rock Locations'

19:30, Film Night at Civic Centre
Brighton Rock
(UK, 1947; 92 minutes; directed by John Boulting; starring Richard Attenborough and Carol Marsh; classification, PG)
With an introduction by Quentin Falk, who will lead a post-film discussion

Saturday 1st October 2011

Talks and Events in Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School

Exhibition: Illustrations from Greene’s books for children and displays of winning entries in the Creative Writing Awards 2011

9:30 – 10:30, Professor Cedric Watts
'Brighton Rock, Janus and Proteous'

11:00 – 12:00, Professor Joyce Stavick
'The Not-so-Quiet Americans: University Students Speak Out as Greene Film Critics'

14:15 – 15:15, Professor Michael Brennan
'Faith and Authorship in the early Novels

15:45 – 16:45, Lee Langley
'Traps and Escapes'

18:15 – 18:30, Book Launch
Dermot Gilvary and Dr Darren Middleton present Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene (New York: Continuum, 2011)

18:30, Andrew Bourget
'Birthday Toast'

18:45 – 19:45, Professor Steve Chibnall
'Problems with Pinkie: Adapting Brighton Rock for the screen, 1947 and 2010'

20:00, The Bourget-Greene Gala Dinner in Old Hall
Followed by Ed Reardon: 'A Short Talk'

Saturday 1st October 2011: Alternative Event

9:30 – 16:30, Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone and William Ivory
A Creative Writing Workshop in Prose Fiction and Screenplay

GGBT’s Creative Writing Awards 2011
The prizes will be presented.

GGBT Creative Writing Awards 2012
Titles or starting points for stories, travel pieces and screenplays will be announced, and publicised on the Festival’s website, on the GGBT’s Facebook pages and on the Ex-Director’s Blog.

Sunday 2nd October 2011

9:00 – 9:45, David Pearce
Tour of Berkhamsted School

Talks in Newcroft in Berkhamsted School

10:00 – 11:00, Dr Bernard Ineichen
'Spies, Lies and Dangerous to Believe — espionage in the writings of Norman Lewis and Graham Greene'

11:30 – 12:30, Professor Neil Sinyard
‘"All writers are equal but some writers are more equal than others": some
reflections on links and contrasts between Graham Greene and George Orwell'

12:45 – 14:00, Farewell Lunch in Old Hall (Berkhamsted School)

Some biographical information about speakers and full details of events and tickets and may be read on the Festival’s website.

Michael Brennan and Lee Langley will speak at Festival 2011

At the Graham Greene International Festival Michael G. Brennan (above, top) (Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of Leeds, UK) and the writer Lee Langley (above, below; photo, Daily Mail) will be the guest speakers in Deans’ Hall, Berkhamsted School (Berkhamsted, UK) on the afternoon of Saturday 1st October 2011.

Prof. Brennan will speak on “Faith and Authorship in the Early Novels” of Graham Greene. Recently he published Fictions, Faith and Authorship (Continuum, 2010), which is a comprehensive reconsideration of Greene’s exploration of faith, doubt, literary versatility and authorial identity in his fictions and other writings.

Award-winning novelist and travel-writer, Lee Langley will speak on “Traps and Escapes”, and will discuss the pleasures and problems of adaptation and the lure of faraway places to writers of fiction. She wrote the screen adaptation of Greene's The Tenth Man, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Prof. Brennan’s research interests include: (i) the writings in manuscript and print, literary patronage, and public careers of the Sidneys of Penshurst and the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, of Wilton between 1500 and 1700; (ii) the writings of Graham Greene and in particular various aspects of religious faith in Greene’s fiction and his travel writings, his close and creative relationship with Evelyn Waugh, and the often polarised responses of literary biography to Greene’s career; and (iii) travel writings in manuscript and print between 1500 and 1700, especially relating to Western Europe and the Levant.

He welcomes enquiries from prospective research students who are interested in pursuing topics relating to Renaissance Studies, Graham Greene and Travel Writings.

Lee Langley is the author of several novels, including Changes of Address (1987), a largely autobiographical account of her childhood in India and the first in a loose trilogy of novels set in India. It was followed by Persistent Rumours (1992), which won the Writers' Guild Award (Best Fiction) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book), and A House in Pondicherry (1995). Her novel, Distant Music (2001), spans six centuries in a narrative that begins on the Portuguese island of Madeira in the fifteenth century, and ends in London in the year 2000. Twice she has been short-listed for the Hawthornden Prize.

She has also written several film scripts and screenplays, including television adaptations of stories by Rumer Godden and Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance, as well as a play, Baggage.

Cathy Hogan wins Award for best fiction

Cathy Hogan (above left), who comes from Kilkenny (Republic of Ireland), won the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Award for Best Fiction Writer 2010. She received her prize from the psychoanalyst and former England cricket captain, Michael Brearley OBE (above right) at the Graham Greene International Festival 2010, when a packed auditorium cheered her splendid writing. Her achievement is recognised in the newsletter (issue number eight) of the School of Humanities at the National University of Ireland, Galway (Republic of Ireland), where she is a third-year student on the BA with Creative Writing Programme.

Cathy's tale "The Second Carriage" is a story about sexual identity, as she introduces a thirty-year old who has been blind since birth, and who is returning to visit parents in the Republic of Ireland after a sex change from female to male. As if anticipating her child’s need for spiritual guidance, the mother has arranged for the priest to visit their home. However, her daughter --- who is now her son --- has lost the faith, and anticipates only difficulty in meeting ageing parents who remain fixed in twentieth century ways of thinking, as she/he sees them. The writer skilfully employs the telephone as a device to create tension and to suggest distance between parent and child.

The winners of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards 2010 were Cathy Hogan (best fiction), Susan Shemtob (best screenplay), Rebecca Barrow (best writer under 21 years of age), Sid Sagar (best Berkhamstedian) and Anne Chinneck (best Old Berkhamstedian). The prizes were presented by Michael Brearley and William Ivory, who wrote the screenplay for the popular film, Made in Dagenham (UK, 2010).

The starting point for all texts in the competition was: “A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement....”, and the award-winning texts were displayed in the Exhibition in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, UK), on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd October 2010.

The closing date for submission of texts for the next round of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards is 1st April 2011. Full details of the competitions are available on the Trust’s website, from which you can also download a pdf file with the complete rules.

Susan Shemtob wins best screenplay award

Susan Shemtob (above right) won the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Award for Best Screenplay 2010. She received her prize from William Ivory (above left) at the Graham Greene International Festival 2010, when a packed auditorium gave Susan a warm reception.

She wrote a lively screenplay in which she presented the funeral of a young man and other moments from present time, which were interwoven with past time and a violent murder on a railway train. Her text showed a keen appreciation of how the medium of screenplay (as opposed to a stage play) might work in images and cuts, as well as in dialogue and action.

All screenplays in the competition had to embed the following line in their work: “A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement”, and the award-winning texts were displayed in the Exhibition in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, UK), on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd October 2010.

The other winners of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s inaugural Creative Writing Awards 2010 were Cathy Hogan (best fiction), Rebecca Barrow (best writer under 21 years), Sid Sagar (best Berkhamstedian) and Anne Chinneck (best Old Berkhamstedian).

The prizes were presented by William Ivory, who wrote the screenplay for the popular film Made in Dagenham (UK, 2010), and the psychoanalyst and former England cricket captain, Michael Brearley, OBE.

The closing date for submission of texts for the next round of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards is 1st April 2011. Full details of the competitions are available on the Trust’s website, from which you can also download a pdf file with the complete rules.

Sid Sagar is Best Berkhamstedian

Sid Sagar (above right) won the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Award for Best Berkhamstedian Writer 2010. He received his prize from the psychoanalyst and former England cricket captain, Michael Brearley, OBE (above left), at the Graham Greene International Festival 2010, when a packed auditorium gave Sid an enthusiastic reception.

He wrote an exciting short story from the point of view of a man whose problems with money and alcohol lead him into bad company and the desperate remedy of acting as a hired assassin. Written in a modern and exciting style, the tale moves quickly to a conclusion, which reassures the reader with the suggestion that evil does not necessarily triumph.

The starting point for all texts in the competition was: “A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement....”, and the award-winning texts were displayed in the Exhibition in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, UK), on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd October 2010.

The winners of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards 2010 were Cathy Hogan (best fiction), Susan Shemtob (best screenplay), Rebecca Barrow (best writer under 21 years), Sid Sagar (best Berkhamstedian) and Anne Chinneck (best Old Berkhamstedian). Prizes were presented by Michael Brearley and William Ivory, writer of the screenplay for the popular film Made in Dagenham (UK, 2010).

The closing date for submission of texts for the next round of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards is 1st April 2011. Full details of the competitions are available on the Trust’s website, from which you can also download a pdf file with the complete rules.

Graham Greene Birthplace Trust's Creative Writing Awards 2011

If you are interested in creative writing, why not try your luck in a competition organised by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust?

Here are the titles or starting points for the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards 2011.

Prose writers must begin with the following line, and continue from there:
“Everybody in the world, so they say, has a double…”

Screenplay writers must embed this line somewhere in their dialogue:
“Everybody in the world, so they say, has a double.”

Your text must be written mostly in the English language, and it must be no more than 800 words long. The closing date for submission of texts is 1st April 2011. You may enter more than one text, if you wish. There are seven categories under which you may enter:

(i) best fiction writer
(ii) best thriller writer
(iii) best travel writer
(iv) best screenplay writer
(v) best writer under the age of twenty-one years on 1st April 2011
(vi) best Berkhamstedian writer (i.e. a writer who is a pupil at Berkhamsted School on 1st April 2011)
(vii) best Old Berkhamstedian writer (i.e. a writer who is a former pupil at Berkhamsted School on 1st April 2011).

Full details of the competitions are available on the Trust’s website, from which you can also download a pdf file with the complete rules. Entries will be welcome from writers all around the world.

The winners of the Awards 2011 will be announced on Saturday 1st October 2011 in Deans’ Hall (Berkhamsted School, UK, shown in the images above) at the Graham Greene International Festival.

There will also be one-day courses for aspiring prose fiction and screenplay writers at the Graham Greene International Festival 2011.

Programme change: Festival 2010

Monica Ali is unwell, and regrets that she is unable to appear at the Graham Greene International Festival on Saturday 2nd October 2010. In her place Svetlana Dimcovic will speak about directing Greene's The Potting Shed at the Finborough Theatre, London.