It’s a century since Graham Greene lived and worked in Nottingham. Those four months, over the winter of 1925-1926, added up to just a short phase in what proved to be a long life, but the experience was critical for the development of his faith (he was baptised a Catholic in the city’s Cathedral in February 1926) and in helping shape his outlook as a writer.
Many of you will have enjoyed reading David Belbin‘s serialised novel Greeneland on Substack over the winter. David recreated Greene’s Nottingham sojourn in a wonderfully evocative melding of biography, literary history and fictional (re)imagining. In a brilliant conception, he released each chapter free online on the exact day (between November and March) when the real Greene “action” occurred one hundred years before.
David now plans to lead a free two-mile walk retracing Greene’s Nottingham footsteps on Monday 28 September, the day after The Graham Greene International Festival (at which he will be speaking about Greeneland). Everyone is welcome. Meet at 1.30 pm by the left-side lion sculpture in the old Market square near the tram stop (two stops from Nottingham station). The walk will take in the Nottingham Journal building (where Greene worked), the former Elite cinema (which he visited often), the Arboretum (where he would walk his dog), and his Nottingham lodgings.
At the Roman Catholic Cathedral Church of St. Barnabas, where Greene was baptised, Ruth Shelton, a Roman Catholic poet and Greene admirer, will guide us through his conversion there.
The walk will finish in nearby Bromley House Library, the 205-year-old private subscription library, where there will be refreshments and an optional informal tour of the library itself.
For further information contact david.belbin@gmail.com