Graham Greene
A Day School is taking place in late April presented by Dr. Creina Mansfield (left) and Dr. Martin R. Jervis entitled Getting to Know the General: Graham Greene and Panama. Greene was heavily involved with Panama, its leader and the politics of this small, strategically important Central American country in the 1970s and 80s. He expected a novel to emerge as a result of the time he spent in Panama in the company of President Omar Torrijos Herrera and his colourful security guard Sergeant Chuchu, erstwhile Professor of Marxist Philosophy at Panama University. It never did and all that remains of that project is a short story called ‘On the Way Back’ published in 1982 in a collection called Firebird 1: Writing Today.
Instead, Greene wrote a memoir of his experiences entitled Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement (1984) which he dedicated ‘To the Friends of my Friend, Omar Torrijos, in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama’. It covers an intriguing and scarcely researched part of Greene’s later life which preoccupied much of his time and his writing in the last decade of his life. All this and much more will be explored by Drs. Mansfield and Jervis during the day school which you are highly recommended to attend if possible. Please click on the tab below for a flyer giving details of the day.
