[Jon Stallworthy, literary critic and poet.] Typed Letter Signed ('Jon') to the playwright Christopher Fry, praising Fry's 'screen-play for the film of Genesis', which John Bell of the Oxford University Press had wanted to publish.

1p, 8vo. In good condition. Folded twice. With secretarial note in blue pencil, recording response by 'C.F.' The letter concerns Fry's screenplay for the 1966 film 'The Bible: In the Beginning...', produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Huston, which recounts the first 22 chapters of the Book of Genesis. Stallworthy wonders whether Fry remembers 'that, “in the dark backward and abyss of time”, the OUP wanted to publish your screen-play for the film of Genesis, but the film company's lawyers wouldn't allow it. John Bell [(1922-2008), senior editor at the Oxford University Press] and I were desolated, and over the years I have so often remembered/half-remembered/mis-remembered your opening stage-direction description of the first days of creation that I'm writing to ask whether, by any happy chance, you have a copy of those pages that I could see and show to deserving friends?' He ends by stating that his brother-in-law 'Jim Thompson (Bishop of Bath and Wells), for one would like to see it – almost as much as | Yours ever, | Jon'.