Update 8 May

The Graham Greene International Festival is less than six months away and Festival Director Richard Greene has been hard at work assembling an excellent ‘cast’ of speakers to delight and fascinate us at our 26th annual gathering in Berkhamsted between 25-28 September.

This year, Richard has been able to secure the services of the great writer, comedian and broadcaster Armando Iannucci who is coming to Berkhamsted to talk about his love of Graham Greene’s works. We are thrilled at the prospect and much look forward to hearing why Armando is such a GG fan. If you want to hear him speak, he is scheduled for the 4.00pm slot at the Town Hall on the Friday afternoon.

Among other highlights in an excellently diverse line-up, oral historian Angela Maye-Bradbury will create a picture of Achill Island, off the west coast of Ireland, where Graham Greene and his lover Catherine Walston spent some of their happiest days while Graham was writing one of his most famous novels The Heart of the Matter.  Kevin Ruane, again on the theme of the Greene/Walston liaison, will discuss progress on his vast project of editing the entire collection of correspondence between the couple. This is a very important and novel piece of research. Brigitte Timmerman will present ‘Female Aspects of The Third Man’. Brigitte will open up a fresh and largely unexplored angle in relation to one of the world’s greatest films.

There is much, much more. The Festival Programme is in the course of preparation for publishing and will be available shortly. We also hope to be able announce soon details about Advance Booking for the festival.