Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Books
The best books in this selection are marked by a Ì symbol; titles currently
out of print are indicated as “o/p”. Recommended specialist Greek booksellers
include, in the UK, the Hellenic Bookservice ( W hellenicbookservice.com) and,
in Canada, Kalamos Books ( W kalamosbooks.com).
TRAVEL/IMPRESSIONS
Ì Kevin Andrews The Flight of Ikaros (o/p). Intense,
compelling account by a sensitive young archeologist
wandering the backcountry during the civil war. Five
decades on, still one of the best books on Greece as it was
before “development”.
Ì Gerald Durrell My Family and Other Animals .
Delightful evocation of Durrell's 1930s childhood on Corfu,
where his family settled, and where he developed a
passion for the island's fauna while elder brother Lawrence
entertained Henry Miller and others.
Lawrence Durrell Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a
Marine Venus . The former constitutes Durrell's Corfu
memoirs, from his time there as World War II loomed.
Marine Venus recounts his 1945-47 colonial-administrator
experiences of Rhodes and other Dodecanese islands.
Ì Patrick Leigh Fermor Roumeli and Mani . Sir Patrick
- knighted in 2004 for his writing and contribution to
British-Greek relations - is an aficionado of rural Greece's
vanishing minorities and customs. These two volumes,
written in the late 1950s and early 1960s respectively, are
scholarly travelogues interspersed with strange yarns.
Despite self-indulgent passages, they remain among the
best books on modern Greece.
Eleni Gage North of Ithaka . Eleni is the namesake and
granddaughter of the Eleni whose murder her son Nicholas
famously set out to avenge (see p.804). A New York
journalist, she decided to spend most of 2002 in her
grandmother's old Epirot village in Epirus, rebuilding the
family house - and more. Her open-hearted account takes
in village life and travels from Albania to Árta.
Roy Hounsell The Papas and the Englishman: From Corfu
to Zagoria . Roy and wife Effie forsake the usual expat
arenas and settle in Koukoúli under Mount Gamíla,
renovating an ancient, crumbled mansion.
John Humphrys and Christopher Humphrys Blue
Skies and Black Olives: A Survivor's Tale of Housebuilding and
Peacock Chasing in Greece . The irascible BBC presenter and
his son, a cellist with a Greek orchestra, give their
contrasting versions of the frustrations involved in building
a holiday home in the Peloponnese. Enjoyable, if all a bit
familiar.
Yorgos Ioannou Refugee Capital (o/p). Brilliant, wide-
ranging essays on Thessaloníki by a native, touching on its
political powerlessness, its vanished Jews, the grip of the
Orthodox Church, flowering shade trees, and gay cruising
at its old cinemas.
Edward Lear The Corfu Years, The Cretan Journal and
Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania (latter
o/p). Highly entertaining journals - the first two
beautifully illustrated -from the 1840s and 1850s.
Peter Levi The Hill of Kronos . Finely observed landscapes,
monuments, personalities and politics, as poet and
classical scholar Levi describes his first journeys to Greece in
the 1960s, before being drawn into resistance against the
colonels' junta.
Sydney Loch Athos: The Holy Mountain (o/p). Resident in
Ouranópoli tower on Mount Áthos from 1924 to 1954, Loch
recounts the legends surrounding the various monasteries,
gleaned from years of visiting the monastic republic.
John Lucas 92 Acharnon Street . Fond memories of Athens
in the 1980s, beautifully told by a poet with a poetic turn of
phrase.
Ì Willard Manus This Way to Paradise: Dancing on the
Tables . American expat's memoir of nearly four decades in
Líndhos, Rhodes, beginning long before its submersion in
tourism. Wonderful period detail, including bohemian
excesses and cameos from such as S.J. Perelman, Germaine
Greer and Martha Gellhorn.
Christopher Merrill Things of the Hidden God: Journey to
the Holy Mountain. Merrill, an accomplished poet and
journalist, first came to Áthos in the wake of a traumatic
time reporting on the breakup of Yugoslavia. With fine
black-and-white photographs, this is probably the best
contemporary take on Áthos, and Orthodoxy.
Henry Miller The Colossus of Maroussi . Corfu, Crete,
Athens and the soul of Greece in 1939, with Miller
completely in his element; funny, sensual and transporting.
Dilys Powell An Affair of the Heart and The Villa Ariadne .
Powell accompanied archeologist husband Humfry Payne
on excavations at the Hereon of Perahóra, and after his
sudden death in 1936 maintained strong links with the
local villagers, described in An Affair…. . The clearer-eyed,
less sentimental The Villa Ariadne chronicles her 1950s
travels to Crete.
Leon Sciaky Farewell to Salonica . Memoir of a Belle
Époque boyhood in a middle-class Sephardic Jewish
 
 
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