Graham Greene Festival 2019

The Graham Greene International Festival is about to happen at Greene’s birthplace of Berkhamsted once again, and this year’s event, running from Thursday 19th to Sunday 22nd of September, is the 21st such garrulous gathering.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it, how you always get what you pray for,” reflects Milly, beloved daughter of Wormold, the hapless intelligence agent in Graham Greene’s comic satirical masterpiece Our Man in Havana (1958). The theme for the 2019 Festival is described by Festival Director Martyn Sampson as Reflections on Greene: to give voice to the shades of reflectiveness and the reflections — and reflections on reflections — that present insights into the life and work of Greene. The programme of events could be compared to a veritable hall of mirrors, plentiful in perspectives and diverse in points of view, in which Festival-goers can pursue all manner of different leads and ideas.

Tickets will be on sale at the door for all events other than the meals, and online via the website: grahamgreenebt.org/tickets.

Season tickets, which offer a discount, are available for those who plan to attend all the talks and films. Friends of the GGBT can obtain a small discount on tickets by putting ‘Friends’ in the code box when purchasing.

 

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THURSDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER

Railway Station (or Court House) and the Town Hall

Afternoon session (£5)

Berkhamsted Railway Station (or Court House)

2.15       Berkhamsted, The Greene Guide: a guided walk of approximately one hour, led by Brian Shepherd, with readings from A Sort of Life, The Human Factor and The Captain and the Enemy, by Judy Mead and Richard Shepherd. Meet outside the rear entrance to Berkhamsted Railway Station (the Platform 4 exit) for introduction. In the event of wet weather, there will be an illustrated talk with readings in The Court House.

 

Evening session

The Town Hall

(Supper and film £30; supper only £20; film only £10.)

5.15       Film Supper: 5.15 meet for drinks at pay bar, 6.00 waitress – served two-course supper with coffee; vegan/vegetarian option.      

(Please book by Monday 9 September at the latest.)

7.15       (For 7.30 start.) Film: 21 Days (London Film Productions, 1940, 72 minutes), directed by Basil Dean, screenplay by Basil Dean and Graham Greene, and starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Introduced by Mike Hill.

 

 

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FRIDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER

The Town Hall, The Civic Centre

Morning session (£16)

 The Town Hall

9.45       Greene & Sherry: The Fox & The Hound: a talk by Lucinda Cummings-Kilmer, who was research assistant to Norman Sherry, the first biographer of Greene

10.45      Break for tea and coffee

11.15      “It was our Bible”: US Vietnam War era Reporters (1965−1975) and the impact of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American: a talk by Professor Kevin Ruane of Canterbury Christ Church University.

Break for lunch

12.45      A repeat of Berkhamsted: The Greene Guide (£5). In the event of wet weather, there will be an illustrated talk with readings in The Town Hall.

 

Afternoon session (£16)

The Town Hall

2.30       Brighton Rock: Wrestling a Wonderful Story from out of a Book and onto the Stage: Bryony Lavery and Esther Richardson are interviewed by Mark Lawson.

3.30       Break for tea and coffee

4.00       The Priest in the Novels of Graham Greene: The Saint and the Sinner: A talk by Revd. Canon Emeritus Professor David Jasper of the University of Glasgow. The David Pearce Memorial Talk.

 

Evening session (£10)

 The Civic Centre

7.30       Film night: Our Man in Havana (Kingsmead Productions, 1959, 111 minutes), directed by Carol Reed, screenplay by Graham Greene, and starring Alec Guinness, Ernie Kovacs, Burl Ives and Maureen O’Hara. Introduced by Quentin Falk.

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SATURDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER

Deans’ Hall and Old Hall, Berkhamsted School (Castle Street)

Morning session (£17)

Deans’ Hall

9.45      Vicious Cities: Shadows of The Third Man in Our Man in Havana: a talk by Dr Chris Hull of the University of Chester and Dr James Clifford Kent of Royal Holloway, University of London.

10.45    Break for tea and coffee

11.15    What or who was The Third Man . . . and the vital question remains. . . .: Miles Hyman and Jean-Luc Fromental are interviewed by Dr Brigitte Timmermann.

Break for lunch

 

 

Mid-afternoon session (£17)

Deans’ Hall

2.00      The launch of the Graham Greene Film Review Competition: A presentation by Dr Creina Mansfield, Emma Clarke, Quentin Falk and Dr Jo Barnardo-Wilson.

2.30      Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro’s Cuba: a talk by Sarah Rainsford.

3.30     Break for tea and coffee

4.00      Politics and the Novel: a talk by Sir Vince Cable, former Leader of the Liberal Democrats 2017-19 and former Secretary of State for Business.

 

Late-afternoon session, including Birthday Toast (£15)

5.00      The Birthday Toast: by Jonathan Bourget.

5.30      Where is the line between true crime and crime fiction?: a talk by Geoffrey Wansell.

 

Evening session (£36)

Old Hall

8.00      Festival Dinner: three courses with wine and coffee; vegan/vegetarian option, with grace to be said by Revd. Canon Emeritus Professor David Jasper. (Limited to 60 tickets. Please book by Monday 9 September at the latest.)

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SUNDAY 22 SEPTEMBER

VIth Form Centre and Old Hall, Berkhamsted School (Castle Street)

Morning session (£16)

VIth Form Centre, Castle Street

9.00      A Tour of the School & Archives: including a look at the Exhibition Room, the green baize door, Old Hall and the School Chapel. Meet outside Old Hall.

10.00     Scandinavians are terribly Scandinavian: Graham Greene’s friendship with Norwegian writer Nordahl Grieg: a talk by Johanne Elster Hanson. This talk will follow an introduction by Ian Thomson.

11.00    Break for tea and coffee

11.30    Graham Greene’s Hungarian Connection: a talk by Dr Tamás Molnár and Dr Ramón Porta.

 

Old Hall Lunch (£25)

1.00      Farewell Lunch: cold buffet, wine and coffee; vegan/vegetarian   option. (Limited to 60 tickets. Please book by Monday 9 September at the latest.)

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The venues will feature exhibitions during the course of the Festival. The Graham Greene Trust Festival bookstall and Richard Frost’s second-hand bookstall will be open on the Friday and Saturday. Both will feature a large selection of books by, and relating to, Graham Greene. A free Festival brochure will be available during the Festival. It will include a full Festival programme, details of speakers and more. A Season ticket to all events, including both films but excluding meals, is available for £106. There is free admission to all Festival events (excluding meals) for under 21s. If you have any queries or problems with tickets, please email ticketing@grahamgreenebt.com or phone +44 7988 560496.

Friends of The Graham Greene Trust

You are cordially invited to become a Friend of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust at: grahamgreenebt.org/membership

Benefits include receipt of a quarterly magazine entitled A Sort of Newsletter and a Festival discount of £2 per event (for up to five events).

Prevenge

Alice Lowe, star and co-writer of Sightseers, makes her directorial debut with a misfiring black comedy about a heavily pregnant woman guided by her unborn child.

Ruth (Lowe) is looking for a pet for her son. That’s what she tells a pet store owner, anyway. Just before slitting his throat, at the behest of her daughter; as yet unborn but already very demanding – and rather homicidal. And so it goes. Ruth targets men and women for sudden bloody murder, and nobody sees it coming, because who would suspect a woman in her final trimester to be capable of such violence. But as it becomes clear that Ruth is working her way through a very particular list of transgressors, she starts to have doubts about the wisdom of what she’s doing.

Prevenge is a strange beast indeed. You seem expected to give a standing ovation to Lowe for not only writing, but starring and directing in the semi-improvised romp, while she was herself in her final trimester. But if the resulting film isn’t any good, what does it matter what the circumstances of its production were? Teeth and Jennifer’s Body are the films that came to mind while watching this, and that’s not a compliment. At first it seems Ruth is killing men for making 1970s sitcom double entendres, or for not being interested in having children. Then she murders a woman uninterested in having children and prejudiced against women who are and waste her time faffing about with maternity leave. By the time you understand her motives it’s already too late.

Prevenge is a mean-spirited film, and perfunctorily so. Each victim feels like a vignette, as if Lowe had taken the modus operandi of Kind Hearts & Coronets, but dispensed with the delicious calculation and Alec Guinness’ delightful gallery of twits and bounders.

1/5

David Lean at the Lighthouse

As the last thoughts of an Indian summer disappear, the leaves fall everywhere, and scarves and hats are disinterred and pressed in to use, the Lighthouse announces a Lean season.

Afternoons with David Lean will take place throughout November, with one of England’s finest film directors working on the largest cinematic canvasses imaginable. And Lean’s precision as a director and the scale of his work have no finer representation than the first film Lawrence of Arabia. Meanwhile the 50^th anniversary of Lean’s Russian revolutionary romance Doctor Zhivago is marked at the end of the month with a newly restored re-release.

 

Lawrence of Arabia

1 & 4 Nov, 2pm

Lean may have clashed with cinematographer Freddie Young (“Don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs” the older man barked at Lean), but their collaboration betrays no signs of that tension. Shimmering sands are scored by Maurice Jarre’s unforgettable theme, Omar Sharif’s arrival is legendarily menacing and mysterious, and Peter O’Toole makes an unforgettable leading man debut as TE Lawrence. Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Anthony Quinn co-star as the Machiavellian players surrounding the enigmatic Lawrence’s attempts to inspire an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire in WWI.

 

Tickets available here: http://lighthouse.admit-one.eu/index.php?s=LHSMITHF&p=details&eventCode=330

 

The Bridge on the River Kwai

8 & 11 November, 3pm

This World War II drama marked the beginning of Lean’s epic phase, with a tremendous use of a whistled ‘Colonel Bogey’s March’. POW British soldiers begin construction of a bridge under the leadership of Alec Guinness’ noble commanding officer. But James Donald’s Doctor soon realises that Colonel Nicholson has lost his grip. Jack Hawkins and William Holden are in the jungles on a mission to destroy the bridge. Little do they know that by its completion they might as well propose blowing up Colonel Nicholson…

 

Tickets available here: http://lighthouse.admit-one.eu/index.php?s=LHSMITHF&p=details&eventCode=18344

 

Ryan’s Daughter

15 & 18 November, 2pm

Lean’s third successive collaboration with Freddie Young and screenwriter Robert Bolt proved the moment when the wheels fell off the wagon, leading to a 14 year cinematic silence from Lean. The heroine was played by Bolt’s wife Sarah Miles, a less than convincing young Irishwoman, and her affair with a British soldier was doomed by the casting of troubled Christopher Jones who didn’t act onscreen for thirty years after this outing. Trevor Howard, John Mills and Robert Mitchum all did their best, but a love story with unconvincing lovers…

 

Tickets available here: http://lighthouse.admit-one.eu/index.php?s=LHSMITHF&p=details&eventCode=12884

 

Brief Encounter

22 & 25 November, 4pm

The sole entry in this season from the smaller-scale Lean is a love story scripted by another frequent collaborator Noel Coward from his own play. Housewife Celia Johnson is tempted to have an affair with a doctor she meets by chance at a train station, played by Trevor Howard. Brief Encounter’s use of Rachmaninov’s heart-rending 2^nd Piano Concerto was extremely influential, and it remains a key influence on cinematic romance. Repressed, simmering passion of noble, thwarted lovers is quite similarly at play in Wong’s In the Mood for Love.

 

 Tickets available here:  http://lighthouse.admit-one.eu/index.php?s=LHSMITHF&p=details&eventCode=20967

 

Doctor Zhivago

From 27 November…

After the all-male heroics of Lawrence, Lean, Bolt, and Young reunited for a romance on a similar epic scale. Spanning decades of modern Russian history Boris Pasternak’s novel became a totemic cinematic love story, with Maurice Jarre’s balalaika-led ‘Lara’s Theme’ taking on a life of its own. Omar Sharif’s titular medic spends his life torn between two women, Geraldine Chaplin and Lara herself, Julie Christie. Tom Courtenay, Rod Steiger and Ralph Richardson are memorable supporting players fleshing out the fall of Tsarist Russia and the madness of the Russian Civil War.

 

 Tickets available here: http://lighthouse.admit-one.eu/index.php?s=LHSMITHF&p=details&eventCode=355