Summary
The Third Man, Brighton Rock, Travels With My Aunt - the books of Graham Greene all still have a definite ring. But the the man himself was an enigma. He worked both as a spy as well as a foreign correspondent, and wrote endlessly about shady characters and secret affairs. This programme opens with him talking about his love of playing Russian Roulette - it turns out that Graham Greene was easily bored. Choosing Greene for Great Lives is Tim Butcher, 20 years a war reporter for the Daily Telegraph and more recently author of Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart, a title that suggests the influence of Greeneland. Tim says that it's his depiction of seedy life that appeals. The programme also features the voices of Beryl Bainbridge, Christopher Hampton and Auberon Waugh, along with a classic clip of Trevor Howard as Scobie in the Heart of the Matter from 1953. Matthew Parris is unimpressed with Greene's treatment of his wife, Vivienne, and questions whether the image Greene created was really true. David Pearce, founding trustee of the International Graham Greene Festival offers a robust defence. Future programmes in the series include editions on Shakespeare, Kirsty MacColl, and Antonio Carluccio on the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. The producer is Miles Warde.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Thank you for downloading this great lives podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:41.0 | For more information and details of other podcasts just visit BBC.co. |
| 0:44.9 | UK slash Radio 4. |
| 0:48.0 | A Riddle. What do an East Anglian brewery, a former director general of the BBC, and one of the last centuries |
| 0:55.8 | most eminent English novelists have in common. |
| 0:59.1 | Easy. |
| 1:00.1 | Green, Hugh Green, Graham Green, all the same family. |
| 1:05.0 | My great life today is a novelist who is the scourge of my A-Level English literature |
| 1:11.0 | endeavours. |
| 1:12.0 | Reading down a list of Graham Green's books, |
| 1:14.1 | I was struck by how familiar the titles still seem. |
| 1:17.5 | Brighton Rock, the Third Man, |
| 1:19.2 | travels with my aunt, the heart of the matter, |
| 1:21.0 | burnt out case, the power and the glory, my A-Level set book. |
| 1:25.0 | They all have a definite ring, even though it's 20 years now since Graham Green died. |
| 1:31.0 | But if his books seem familiar, in part because of the films they fathered, the man himself |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.