The Name of Action
The Name of Action is Graham Greene's second novel, published in 1930. The book was badly received by critics, suffered poor sales. Greene repudiated the book and it has remained out of print since; the title of the book is derived from the famous "To be, or not to be" speech from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Disillusioned by Britain, wealthy youth Oliver Chant is sent abroad to Trier by UK Communist leader Kurtz. Kurtz had been exiled to Britain by Trier's new dictator Demassener and promised Oliver Chant that he'd be part of a dramatic rebellion. Chant arrives in Trier with orders to meet up with the underground party run by a Jewish poet, Joseph Kapper and comrades Torner and Lintz, it becomes apparent that the small faction are not interested in bloodshed, but spreading dissent against the Dictator only by literature and posters. By a strange turn of events the dictator's wife, Anne-Marie Demassener, enters the party's quarters seeking help from a minor car accident, she claims that her husband is more than aware of what these men do and isn't in the least concerned.
Oliver Chant is invited to meet her husband that night, where he witnesses the mother of an executed gun runner come pleading for her son's body. Over the course of the evening Chant becomes infatuated with the dictator's wife, he heads back after the town's curfew, after being cornered by local police is rescued by the poet Kapper, who shoots the policeman dead in the street. Kapper and Chant dispose of the body in the canal and send Kapper's wife out with a tray of raw butcher's meat to spread over the area where the murder took place. In the morning Kapper and Chant argue over the murder, further conflict arises when Kapper shows him the party's next propaganda poster, a slur on the dictator's wife. Chant vows to leave the country, he visits Anne-Marie Demassener to declare his love for her. During his visit the owner of a canal boat enters, tells her of the murdered policeman he fished out of the river. Anne-Marie presumes Chant tells him to leave the country. Chant vows to try and fight for her.
He goes back and, leads the party on a planned rebellion. Chant arranges for a risky liaison to smuggle in arms by canal boat. Anne-Marie is destined to interfere with his plans again, making him question the motive for his involvement and giving Kapper an opportunity to lead the party to success by other means. In his autobiography Ways of Escape Greene spoke of this book and its subsequent repudiation: My second and third novels, The Name of Action and Rumour at Nightfall, published in 1930 and 1931, can now be found, I am glad to think, only in secondhand bookshops at an exaggerated price, since some years after their publication I suppressed them. Both books are of a badness beyond the power of criticism properly to evoke—the prose flat and stilted... The main characters in a novel must have some kinship to the author, they come out of his body as a child comes from the womb the umbilical cord is cut, they grow into independence; the more the author knows of his own character the more he can distance himself from his invented characters and the more room they have to grow in.
With these early novels the cord has not been cut, the author at twenty-six was as unreal to himself, in spite of psychoanalysis at sixteen, as Oliver Chant, the hero of The Name of Action, is to the reader. Chant is only a daydream in the mind of a young romantic author, for it takes years of brooding and of guilt, of self-criticism and of self-justification, to clear from the eyes the haze of hopes and dreams and false ambitions. I was trying knowing nothing of politics. I hope I did better many years with The Quiet American, but how little I had learned of life and politics during three years in the sub-editors’ room of The Times; the Name of Action full text on Internet Archive
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE, known professionally as Deborah Kerr, was a Scottish-born film and television actress. During her international film career, she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Anna Leonowens in the musical film The King and I and a Sarah Siddons Award for her performance as Laura Reynolds in the play Tea and Sympathy, she was a three-time winner of the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Kerr was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, held the record for any actress without winning in the lead actress category until 2019 when Glenn Close made it to seven. In 1994, having received honorary awards from the Cannes Film Festival and BAFTA, she received an Academy Honorary Award with a citation recognising her as "an artist of impeccable grace and beauty, a dedicated actress whose motion picture career has always stood for perfection and elegance"; as well as The King and I, her films include An Affair to Remember, From Here to Eternity, Quo Vadis, The Innocents, Black Narcissus, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, King Solomon's Mines, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Sundowners, Separate Tables.
Deborah Jane Trimmer was born in Glasgow, the only daughter of Kathleen Rose and Capt. Arthur Charles Kerr-Trimmer, a World War I veteran who lost a leg at the Battle of the Somme and became a naval architect and civil engineer. Kerr had a younger brother, who became a journalist, he was killed in a road rage incident in 2004. Kerr was educated at the independent Northumberland House School, Henleaze in Bristol, at Rossholme School, Weston-super-Mare. Kerr trained as a ballet dancer, first appearing on stage at Sadler's Wells in 1938. After changing careers, she soon found success as an actress, her first acting teacher was her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who ran the Hicks-Smale Drama School in Bristol. She adopted the name Deborah Kerr on becoming a film actress. Kerr's first stage appearance was at Weston-super-Mare in 1937, as "Harlequin" in the mime play Harlequin and Columbine, she went to the Sadler's Wells ballet school and in 1938 made her début in the corps de ballet in Prometheus. After various walk-on parts in Shakespeare productions at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, she joined the Oxford Playhouse repertory company in 1940, inter alia, "Margaret" in Dear Brutus and "Patty Moss" in The Two Bouquets.
In 1943, aged 21, Kerr made her West End début as "Ellie Dunn" in a revival of Heartbreak House at the Cambridge Theatre, stealing attention from stalwarts such as Edith Evans and Isabel Jeans. "She has the rare gift", wrote critic Beverley Baxter, "of thinking her lines, not remembering them. The process of development from a romantic, silly girl to a hard, disillusioned woman in three hours was moving and convincing". Kerr returned to the London stage 29 years in many productions including the old-fashioned, The Day After the Fair, a Peter Ustinov comedy, Overheard and a revival of Emlyn Williams's The Corn is Green. After her first London success in 1943, she toured Scotland in Heartbreak House. Near the end of the Second World War, she toured Holland and Belgium for ENSA as "Mrs Manningham" in Angel Street, Britain in Gaslight. Having established herself as a film actress in the meantime, she made her Broadway debut in 1953, appearing in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy, for which she received a Tony Award nomination.
Kerr repeated her role along with her stage partner John Kerr in Vincente Minnelli's film adaptation of the drama. In 1955, Kerr won the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago during a national tour of the play. After her Broadway début in 1953, she toured the United States with Sympathy. In 1975, she returned to Broadway, creating the role of Nancy in Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape. In 1977, she came back to the West End, playing the title role in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida; the theatre, despite her success in films, was always to remain Kerr's first love though going on stage filled her with trepidation: I do it because it's like dressing up for the grown ups. I don't mean to belittle acting but I'm like a child when I'm out there performing—shocking the grownups, enchanting them, making them laugh or cry. It's a kind of masochistic madness; the older you get, the easier it should be. Kerr's first film role was in the British production Contraband in 1940, but her scenes were edited out.
With her next two British films—Major Barbara and Love on the Dole —her screen future seemed assured and her performance, said James Agate of Love on the Dole, "is not within a mile of Wendy Hiller's in the theatre, but it is a charming piece of work by a pretty and promising beginner, so pretty and so promising that there is the usual yapping about a new star". She went on to make Hatter's Castle, in which she starred opposite Robert Newton and James Mason, played a Norwegian resistance fighter in The Day Will Dawn, she was an immediate hit with the public: British exhibitors voted her the most popular local female star at the box office. In 1943, she played three women in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. During the filming, according to Powell's a
Colin Firth
Colin Andrew Firth is an English actor who has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. In 2010, Firth's portrayal of King George VI in Tom Hooper's The King's Speech won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Identified in the late 1980s with the "Brit Pack" of rising, young British actors, it was not until his portrayal of Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that he received more widespread attention; this led to roles in films, such as The English Patient, Bridget Jones's Diary, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA Award, Shakespeare in Love, Love Actually. In 2009, Firth received widespread critical acclaim for his leading role in A Single Man, for which he gained his first Academy Award nomination, won a BAFTA Award. In 2014, Firth portrayed secret agent Harry Hart in the film Kingsman: The Secret Service.
In 2018, he co-starred as William "Weatherall" Wilkins in the musical fantasy Mary Poppins Returns. His films have grossed more than $3 billion from 42 releases worldwide. In 2011, Firth received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was selected as one of the Time 100, he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Winchester in 2007, was made a Freeman of the City of London in 2012. He has campaigned for the rights of indigenous tribal people, is a member of Survival International. Firth has campaigned on issues of asylum seekers, refugees' rights, the environment, he commissioned and co-authored a scientific paper on a study into the differences in brain structure between people of differing political orientations. Firth was born in the village of Grayshott, Hampshire, to parents who were both academics and teachers, his mother, Shirley Jean, was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College, his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer at King Alfred's and education officer for the Nigerian Government.
Firth is the eldest of three children. His maternal grandparents were Congregationalist ministers and his paternal grandfather was an Anglican priest; as a child, Firth travelled due to his parents' work, spending some years in Nigeria. He lived in St. Louis, when he was 11, which he has described as "a difficult time". On returning to England, he attended the Montgomery of Alamein Secondary School, which at the time was a state comprehensive school in Winchester, Hampshire, he was the target of bullying. To counter this, he adopted the local working class Hampshire accent and copied his schoolmates' lack of interest in schoolwork. By the time he was 14, Firth had decided to be a professional actor, having attended drama workshops from the age of 10; until further education, he was not academically inclined saying in an interview, "I didn't like school. I just thought it was boring and mediocre and nothing they taught me seemed to be of any interest at all." However, at Barton Peveril Sixth Form College in Eastleigh, he was imbued with a love of English literature by an enthusiastic teacher, Penny Edwards, has said that his two years at Barton Peveril were "among the two happiest years of my life".
After his sixth form years, Firth joined the National Youth Theatre. There, he made many contacts in the acting world, from which he got a job in the wardrobe department at the National Theatre. From there, he went on to study at Drama Centre London. Playing Hamlet in the Drama Centre end of year production, Firth was spotted by playwright Julian Mitchell, who cast him as the gay, ambitious public schoolboy Guy Bennett in the 1983 West End production of Another Country. In 1984, Firth made his film debut in the role of Tommy Judd, Guy Bennett's straight, Marxist school friend in the screen adaptation of the play; this was the start of longstanding public feud between Firth and Everett, resolved. He starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in Lost Empires, a TV adaptation of J. B. Priestley's novel. In 1987, Firth along with other up and coming British actors such as Tim Roth, Bruce Payne and Paul McGann were dubbed the'Brit Pack'; that same year, he appeared alongside Kenneth Branagh in the film version of J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country.
Sheila Johnston observed a theme in his early works of playing those traumatised by war. Firth portrayed real-life British soldier Robert Lawrence MC in the 1988 BBC dramatisation Tumbledown. Lawrence was injured at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown during the Falklands War, the film details his struggles to adjust to his disability whilst confronted with indifference from the government and the public; the film attracted controversy at the time, with criticism coming from left and right ends of the political spectrum. Firth's performance led to a Royal TV Society Best Actor Award and he was nominated for the 1989 BAFTA Television Award. In 1989, he played the title role based on Les Liaisons dangereuses; this did not make a big impact in comparison. The same year, he played a paranoid awkward character in Argentinian psychological thriller Apartment Zero. Firth became a household name through his role as the aloof and haughty aristocrat Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and
John Mills
Sir John Mills, was an English actor who appeared in more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades. On screen, he played people who are not at all exceptional, but become heroes because of their common sense and good judgment, he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Ryan's Daughter. John Mills was born in Norfolk, the son of Edith, a theatre box office manager, Lewis Mills, a mathematics teacher. Mills was born at Watts Naval School, he spent his early years in the village of Belton where his father was the headmaster of the village school. He first felt the thrill of performing at a concert in the school hall, he lived in a modest house in Gainsborough Road Felixstowe until 1929. His older sister was Annette Mills, remembered as presenter of BBC Television's Muffin the Mule, he was educated at Balham Grammar School in London, Sir John Leman High School in Beccles and Norwich High School for Boys, where it is said that his initials can still be seen carved into the brickwork on the side of the building in Upper St. Giles Street.
Upon leaving school he worked as a clerk at a corn merchant's in Ipswich before finding employment in London as a commercial traveller for the Sanitas Disinfectant Company. In September 1939, at the start of the Second World War, Mills enlisted in the British Army in the Royal Engineers, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, but in 1942 he received a medical discharge because of a stomach ulcer. Mills took an early interest in acting, making his professional début at the London Hippodrome in The Five O'Clock Girl in 1929, he followed this with a cabaret act. Mills got a job with a theatrical company that toured India and the Far East performing a number of plays. Noël Coward saw him appear in a production of Journey's End in Singapore and wrote Mills a letter of introduction to use back in London. On his return Mills starred in The 1931 Revue, Coward's Cavalcade and the Noël Coward revue Words and Music, he made his film début in The Midshipmaid. He appeared in The Ghost Camera with Ida Lupino and Britannia of Billingsgate.
Mills was promoted to leading roles in a comedy. He was in a series of quota quickies: The River Wolves, he was one of many names in Royal Cavalcade. Mills had the star role in Brown on Resolution, it was back to quota quickies for The First Offence. He had another excellent part in an "A", he did Aren't Men Beasts? on stage and worked for Hollywood director Raoul Walsh in O. H. M. S.. Mills starred in The Green Cockatoo directed by William Cameron Menzies, he appeared as Colley in the hugely popular 1939 film version of Goodbye, Mr Chips, opposite Robert Donat. At the Old Vic he was in A Midsummer Night's Dream, She Stoops Of Mice and Men, he joined the army in 1939 but made films on leave. He went back to movies with Old Bill and Son and made Cottage to Let, a war film for Anthony Asquith. Mills went back to supporting Will Hay in The Black Sheep of Whitehall and he was one of many names in the war film, The Big Blockade, he was in Men in Shadow on stage, written by his wife. He achieved acclaim for his performance as an able seaman in Noël Coward's In Which We Serve, a huge hit.
Mills had another good support role in The Young Mr Pitt playing William Wilberforce opposite Robert Donat. He was invalided out of the army in 1942. Mills' climb to stardom began when he had the lead role in We Dive at Dawn, a film directed by Asquith about submariners, he was top billed in This Happy Breed, directed by David Lean from a Noël Coward play, a big hit. Popular was Waterloo Road, from Sidney Gilliat, where Mills played a man who goes AWOL to retrieve his wife from draft-dodging Stewart Granger. Mills played a pilot in The Way to the Stars, directed by Asquith from a script by Terence Rattigan, another big hit in Britain, he did Duet for Two Hands on stage. Mills had his greatest success to date in the lead in Great Expectations, directed by David Lean, it was the third biggest hit at the British box office this year and Mills was voted the sixth most popular star. Less successful critically and financially was So Well Remembered which used American writers and directors; the October Man was a mildly popular thriller from Roy Ward Baker.
Mills played the title role in Scott of the Antarctic, a biopic of Captain Scott. It was the fourth most watched film of the year in Britain and Mills was the eighth biggest star. Mills turned producer with The History of Mr. Polly from the novel by H. G. Wells, it was directed by Anthony Pelissier and Mills said it was his favorite film. Pelisse made The Rocking Horse Winner which Mills produced. More liked at the box office was a submarine drama, Morning Departure, directed by Baker. By this stage his fee was a reported £20,000 a film. After Morning Departure Mills took two years off; the films he made on his return were not popular: a thriller, Mr. Denning Drives North. Mills' had his first hit in a number of years with Hobso
Audible (store)
Audible is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment and educational programming on the Internet. Audible sells digital audiobooks, radio and TV programs, audio versions of magazines and newspapers. Through its production arm, Audible Studios, Audible has become the world's largest producer of downloadable audiobooks. Audible's content is only accessible through special proprietary closed software, including unauthorized-playback prevention by means of an Amazon user name and password. On January 31, 2008 Amazon.com announced. The deal closed in March 2008 and Audible became a subsidiary of Amazon; the company is based in Newark, NJ and is expanding its presence in the city with the creation of a new technology center. Audible is retailer. In January 1995, Audible introduced the first production-volume digital audio player six years before the introduction of the iPod, it only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate.aa format that could be downloaded from Audible.com.
The first player had about 4MB of memory, about two hours of.aa format audio. Audible holds a number of patents in this device area. On October 24, 1999, Audible suffered a setback when its CEO at the time, Andrew J. Huffman, died of an apparent heart attack. Development proceeded, leading to Audible licensing the ACELP codec for its level 3 quality downloads in 2000. Audible scored a coup in 2003 when it made an exclusive deal with Apple to provide their catalog of books on the iTunes Music Store. Books purchased on iTunes would have a.m4b extension and would contain AAC audio covered by Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management. Audible's success began to increase interest in the profile of Don Katz, he had his profile highlighted by AudioFile magazine in early 2003, was called upon to give a recorded talk on IT Conversations in May 2005 about the early history of Audible, was tapped to deliver the keynote address at the Podcast Expo in November 2005. Audible launched Audible Air in 2005, software that made it possible to download audio books over the air - wirelessly and directly to devices such as a smartphones or PDAs.
This eliminated the need for the intermediate step of downloading copy-controlled audio books first to a computer in order to transfer it to Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian Mobile devices. Audible Air content would update automatically, downloading chapters as required that would delete themselves after they had been listened to. Interest in Audible and its founder would continue to attract attention as Don Katz was featured in the March 2006 issue of "Business 2.0". In April 2008, Audible began producing exclusive science fiction and fantasy audiobooks under its "Audible Frontiers" imprint. At launch 25 titles were released. In 2008, Amazon bought the company for $300 million. Audible continued its publishing endeavors in May 2011, when it launched Audiobook Creation Exchange, an online rights marketplace and production platform that connects narrators and rights holders in order to create new audiobooks; the platform has been so successful that in 2012, Audible reported it had received more titles from ACX than from its top three audio providers combined.
In March 2012, Audible launched the A-List Collection, a series showcasing Hollywood stars including Claire Danes, Colin Firth, Anne Hathaway, Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet performing great works of literature. Firth's performance of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair was named Audiobook of the Year at the Audie Awards in 2013. Audible's efforts to make audiobook narration a mainstream art form extends to the narration workshops it offers at acting schools including Juilliard and Tisch School of the Arts. In 2014, at Audible's headquarters' six recording studios and voice actors create new audiobooks 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Technical innovation returned to center-state for the company in September 2012 when Audible launched Whispersync for Voice, an innovation that enables readers to switch seamlessly between reading a Kindle book and listening to the corresponding audiobook without losing their place. Along with Whispersync for Voice, Audible released Immersion Reading, a feature which highlights text on a Kindle book as the audiobook is narrated.
It was the focus in June 2015 when audiblebooks from Audible.com was made available on Amazon Echo, a voice command device from Amazon with functions including question answering, playing music and controlling smart devices. In July 2016, Audible introduced its exclusive version of podcasts. In November 2017, Audible claimed its customers listened to over one billion hours of content during the year. Audible's content includes more than 200,000 audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, entertainers and newspaper publishers and business information providers. Content includes books of all genres, as well as radio shows, interviews, stand-up comedy, audio versions of periodicals such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. In addition to the regular price charged for audiobooks, Audible offers subscriptions with the following benefits: Credits: For a monthly subscription fee, a customer receives one or two audio credits. Most titles can be purchased with one of these credits.
Some titles may cost two credits, while others cost only a thi
The End of the Affair (1999 film)
The End of the Affair is a 1999 drama film directed by Neil Jordan and starring Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore and Stephen Rea. The film is based on The End of the Affair, a 1951 novel by British author Graham Greene, adapted as a film in 1955 with Deborah Kerr. Novelist Maurice Bendrix narrates the film as he begins a book with the line "This is a diary of hate." On a rainy London night in 1946, Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his former mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled: he succumbs to his own jealousy and works his way back into her life; as the story unfolds in 1946, we see flashbacks of Bendrix with Sarah as they began their affair during World War II. Henry tells Bendrix that he believes Sarah is having an affair, so Bendrix hires the bumbling but amiable Mr. Parkis, who uses his young birthmarked son Lance to investigate. Sarah asks Bendrix to meet to talk about Henry and the cold tentativeness of their interaction is contrasted with the passion of their earlier encounters.
Bendrix learns from Parkis that Sarah has been making regular visits to a priest named Father Richard Smythe under the guise of false dentist visits and he grows jealous. Flashbacks show Bendrix asking Sarah to leave him. Though Sarah and Bendrix express love to each other, the affair ends abruptly when a V-1 flying bomb explodes near Bendrix's building as he is out in the hallway. Bendrix falls down a staircase and awakes bloodied but not hurt, he walks upstairs. Bendrix accuses Sarah of being disappointed that he survived and she leaves, telling him "Love doesn't end, just because we don't see each other." In 1946, Parkis obtains Sarah's diary and passes it on to Bendrix: it shows the affair from her perspective. After Bendrix is hurt by the bomb, Sarah runs downstairs and finds him still and not breathing. After trying to revive him, she begins to pray for Bendrix's life. Just as she says to God that she will stop seeing Bendrix if he is brought back, Bendrix comes into the room. Now knowing why Sarah ended the affair, Bendrix begs her to reconsider.
Sarah tells Bendrix that she can no longer keep her "promise" to God. Henry, who has figured out that it is Bendrix, Sarah's lover asks Sarah not to leave him. But, with more persuasion from Bendrix, Sarah agrees to go away with him for a weekend. Henry tracks the couple down to tell them. Bendrix stays with Henry and Sarah over her final days and at her funeral, Parkis tells Bendrix that a chance encounter with Sarah cured his son of his birthmark. At Henry and Sarah's house, Bendrix completes his book and it is revealed that his diary of hate is directed toward God. While Sarah doesn't need to see God to love Him, Bendrix prays God will leave him alone, thereby acknowledging His existence. Ralph Fiennes as Maurice Bendrix Julianne Moore as Sarah Miles Stephen Rea as Henry Miles Heather-Jay Jones as Henry's Maid James Bolam as Mr. Savage Ian Hart as Mr. Parkis Sam Bould as Lance Parkis Cyril Shaps as Waiter Penny Morrell as Bendrix's Landlady Simon Fisher Turner as Doctor Gilbert Jason Isaacs as Father Richard Smythe Deborah Findlay as Miss Smythe Nicholas Hewetson as Chief Warden Jack McKenzie as Chief Engineer Nic Main as Commanding Officer The film holds a 67% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes from a sample of 66 critics.
Julianne Moore was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and Roger Pratt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. The film got several nominations at the BAFTA awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. Neil Jordan won a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay. Neil Jordan was nominated for the Best Director Golden Globe and Julianne Moore was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. Ralph Fiennes won the best eyewear award at the GQ Men of 2000 Awards for the pair of National Health Service spectacles he sported in the film; the film is recognised by American Film Institute in these lists: 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated Michael Nyman used "Diary of Love" to open and close his solo album, The Piano Sings. As with many of Nyman's 1990s scores, he incorporates material from his String Quartet No.3, in turn based on a choral piece titled Out of the Ruins.
Diary of Hate 2:38 Henry 1:46 The First Time 2:16 Vigo Passage 1:04 Jealous of the Rain 5:29 The Party in Question 3:45 Intimacy 3:04 Smythe with a "Y" 1:55 Dispossessed 3:22 Love Doesn't End 4:31 Diary of Love 5:16 Breaking the Spell 1:20 I Know your voice, Sarah 4:10 Sarah dies 3:01 The End of the Affair 2:59A contemporary recording of "Haunted Heart" by Jo Stafford is heard in the background during several scenes and the closing credits. The End of the Affair on IMDb The End of the Affair at AllMovie The End of the Affair at Rotten Tomatoes The End of the Affair at Box Office Mojo
It's a Battlefield
It's a Battlefield is an early novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1934. Graham Greene described it as his "first overtly political novel", its theme, said Greene, is "the injustice of man's justice." In life, Greene classified his major books as "novels" and his lighter works as "entertainments". The title It's a Battlefield is explained by the epigraph, which Greene took from the account of the battle of Inkerman in Alexander Kinglake's The Invasion of the Crimea; the amount of fog during the battle led to many of the troops on both sides being cut off in terrain reduced to "small numberless circlets commensurate with such ranges of vision as the mist might allow at each spot.... In such conditions, each separate gathering of English soldiery went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; the novel explores the intersecting lives of those close to the bus driver Drover in the days before he is due to hang. His Communist colleagues want him to die.
There is no hero. With few exceptions, the characters are deliberately limned as, in one critic's view, "mediocre, uninspiring and at times perverted and stupid"; some of the characters seem only half complete. The resulting interplay of selfish, driven characters creates what Greene called "a panoramic novel of London". In this panorama, the traditional detective story is turned on its head.. The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, newly appointed after a career in the Far East, is summoned to a meeting with an assistant to the Home Secretary, who has to decide whether to reprieve Drover. During a demonstration, this Communist bus driver knifed a policeman, about to strike his wife and is sentenced to hang. Drover's fate affects a wide circle of other people, his wife Milly goes to visit the policeman's widow and seeks comfort with Drover's brother Conrad, consumed with guilt over his incest. Milly's sister Kay goes to bed with Surrogate, a rich economist, a Communist, with Jules, who works in the Soho café where the Communist journalist Conder lodges.
Both Surrogate and the Assistant Commissioner try to enlist the aid of the society hostess, Caroline Bury. All are unsure how far they should try to save Drover, who faces long imprisonment if he does not hang. Conrad, feeling he ought to act, blackmails a pawnbroker into selling him a revolver and shoots at the Assistant Commissioner; the gun was loaded with blanks however, Conrad is knocked down by a car as he fires. Unknown to either, the Home Secretary has reprieved Drover. Though at first it sold few copies, the novel was praised by Ford Madox Ford. Writing in the Spectator, V. S. Pritchett found great merit in what he called an adventurous, intelligent, "genuine modern novel"; the New York Times thought it "engrossing and decidedly well worth reading" That reviewer praised Greene's "cinematographic" style, Greene said that the novel was "intentionally based on film technique" The novel's style is influenced by Ulysses, The Waste Land, Mrs Dalloway and, as Greene admitted, Joseph Conrad.
He alludes to Conrad by naming Drover's brother after him. A few months after publication, a grisly murder occurred in London strikingly similar to a fictional murder described in the novel, Greene feared the police would arrest him. Other similarities with real life were less accidental; the somewhat sleazy character named. Lady Caroline Bury was inspired by Lady Ottoline Morrell, and the Assistant Commissioner the most vivid and humane character in the book, was in part based on Greene's uncle and also in part on a friend named Turner. As for settings, Greene visited a matchbook factory and Wandsworth Prison before writing about those locations in his novel. In 1948, Greene extensively revised the novel for the third edition and his changes were incorporated in future printings. Greene's handwritten revisions were offered for sale in 2010 for $40,000. Malian writer Yambo Ouloguem was accused of plagiarism after he included passages from It's a Battlefield in a 1968 novel
