The American writer Henry Miller visited Greece 73 summers ago on the eve of the Second World War. He fell in love with the northern Peloponnese and in particular with Epidaurus. At the great theatre, built among beautiful hills in the 4th century BC, he had an epiphany described in his book The Colossus of…
Driving north from Athens to the secluded beach and headland at Sounion the other night, Oz-born journalist Brian “Digger” Williams drew our attention to the avenues of giant eucalyptus trees along the way. They look like the “ghost gum” variety we have in Australia except that the trunks are not long and slender, they are…
One of the first Greek myths to made a deep impression on me as a child was the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus, son of King Aegeus, left Athens to defeat the Cretan monster and secure the supremacy of his home state. He succeeded with the help of Ariadne, princess of Crete, who…
As noted in previous despatches, Greece’s vast over-spending on arms was one of the compelling reasons for its debt crisis as well as the corrosive spread of corruption among the political classes. We have been receiving a daily diet of reports on the impending trial of former Defence Minister Akis Tsochalzopoulos, a senior member of…
In just four days in Athens we’ve visited the Benaki Museum, the magnificent ruins and museum at Delphi, climbed to the Acropolis and inspected the Parthenon, and been to the Acropolis Museum and the breathtaking National Archaeological Museum in central Athens. In the days ahead we have a schedule of further trips and tours to…
There are moments when you suddenly connect with an aspect of history you’d never grasped before. Athens this weekend has given us one such moment after another. The Acropolis is such a familiar image that we think we know it. To see it in reality, with the painstaking restoration of the Parthenon proceeding and the…
We’ve flown from the olive lands of Kalamata to Athens, home to five million of Greece’s 12 million people. We’re staying just off Syntagma Square, where all the capital’s big demonstrations take place. Central Athens is a surprise. It’s full of green spaces – we’re right opposite the National Botanic Gardens – and round the…
What a welcome to Athens. At the airport one of the Oz veterans of journalism, Brian “Digger” Williams, is there to greet us and drives us to our hotel which is a few hundred metres from the Parliament, the Presidential Palace and the venue for all the big political rallies. It is the first time…
