Rhidian Brook, novelist, screenwriter and broadcaster, gives the annual Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture, entitled Writing in good faith: a pilgrimage in fiction, film and thought.
Being a writer is to undertake a sort of pilgrimage. A meandering tale of disappointment, rejection and slog, punctuated by moments of joy, satisfaction and recognition. It is a practice that takes devotion, perseverance and faith in things not yet seen.
The writer who is a Christian lives with a belief in the grand narrative of a God who enters history; a God who literally and literarily becomes story. Sometimes this story runs as a subplot out of view, at other times it breaks out centre stage.
How do we tell our own stories in the context of this Story?
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Rhidian Brook is an award-winning writer of fiction, television drama and film.
His first novel, The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (1996), won several prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award and was adapted for a film starring Jonathan Pryce. His third novel, The Aftermath (2013), was an international bestseller and translated into 25 languages; he co-wrote the film adaption that starred Keira Knightley.
For television, Rhidian Brook wrote an original screenplay for the BBC drama, Mr Harvey Lights A Candle, starring Timothy Spall; was a writer on two seasons of Silent Witness; and wrote the original screenplay of the Pathe film Africa United. He has adapted his most recent novel – The Killing of Butterfly Joe (2018) – for film.
Rhidian Brook has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for The Day for 25 years. A collection of his Thoughts, entitled Godbothering, was published in March 2020. 2025 will see the publication of his Passion Week book, Notes on an Execution. He is currently writing a novel inspired by the year he spent living in Jerusalem.
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