Forgotten Genius

He died in 1955, aged 45, in the back of a New York taxi cab (we were not told how), wrote the script for The African Queen (going so far as to direct the moment when the audience should hear Bogart’s stomach rumbling), and won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his once-read-never-forgotten novel, A Death in the Family.

He died in 1955, aged 45, in the back of a New York taxi cab (we were not told how), wrote the script for The African Queen (going so far as to direct the moment when the audience should hear Bogart’s stomach rumbling), and won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his once-read-never-forgotten novel, A Death in the Family. Who is he? The poet, journalist, screenwriter, film critic, novelist James Agee. His work was paid tribute to by another many-sided writer, Blake Morrison, in The Sunday Feature on Radio Three, in a programme which travelled to Knoxville, Tennessee, the setting and inspiration for that wonderfully moving book.