Category: Books
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Graffiti with a message
Greece’s rising graffiti artist is a young local guy by the name of Kostas Louzis who signs his work “Skitsofrenis” (skitso is Greek for sketch). He’s a serious environmental activist whose biggest work spans an extraordinary three kilometres along the roadside from Kalamata to Sparta. The images are of a planet in agony – burnt…
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The right eye of Venice
Methoni at the south-west point of the Peloponnese was the “vine-producing Pedasus” of Homer’s Iliad. In the 13th century it became the biggest Venetian citadel outside Venice itself, and the ruins of the great fort are still there today, maintained (frugally) by the Department of Antiquities. Methoni was known as “the right eye of Venice”…
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The condition of Greek workers
On Monday former ACTU president Sharan Burrow, now general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), came to Athens to present the findings of a European survey of workers’ conditions at a press conference. The situation in Greece, she said, was now “dire”, with 91 per cent of Greek workers on reduced incomes. Warning…
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A tale of two cities
In London, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint is the British Government’s Minister for Trade and Investment. Between 2003 and 2010 he was CEO and chairman of HSBC, the bank that laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels, terrorists and pariah states. He is also an ordained minister of the Church of England who wrote the 1996…
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Where Zorba danced
Near Stoupa in the Mani where we go to swim there’s a beach named Kalogria, which in Greek means “nun”. Local legend has it that almost 1,000 years ago, a novice from the nearby nunnery fell in love with a prince. When the church would not release her from her vows so that she could…
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Discovering a region – and a writer
The Mani is the long peninsula, like the middle prong of the Peloponnese trident, stretching down into the Mediterranean between the Aegean and Ionian seas. We’ve parked ourselves like true Australians on its coastal fringe, at the northern, most accessible end, and are only just beginning to explore it. One who knew the area intimately…
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Paddy’s gift to the nation stalled
When Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, the swashbuckling adventurer, travel writer and war hero, died just over a year ago he bequeathed his magnificent residence at Kardamyli on the coast of the Peloponnese to the Greek people. (See previous online despatch “Where Paddy meets Bruce”, 6.7.12, plus photos on Facebook). In his last will and testament…
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Where Paddy meets Bruce
A 70-minute drive south to Kardamyli on a divine mission to pay tribute to the extraordinary accomplishments of two Englishmen, now departed – Patrick Leigh Fermor and Bruce Chatwin. Leigh Fermor lived in the area almost 50 years and was given honorary citizenship of the village as well as greater awards by the Greek Government.…
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On the Gulf of Messinia
It’s evening. From our hillside terrace we look down across olive groves and cypresses to the calm waters of the Gulf of Messinia. The light is golden; the heat has finally gone out of the day. Our landlord, coming up the hill in his tractor, waves a greeting. It’s blessedly peaceful. We arrived on Monday…
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Celebrating a persecuted genius
Alan Turing, born 100 years ago this week, was one of the scientific geniuses of the 20th century, a key codebreaker for Britain in the Second World War and a pioneer of computing. In 1952 he was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated and died two years later from cyanide poisoning. Today London’s Science Museum…