Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

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At time a little over the top, always evocative and very visually descriptive with the ability to make both the island of Cyprus and it's inhabitants spring to life. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. Some of his knowledge of Greece doesn't seem without merit, such as the fact that Europeans somehow forget that modern Greece's greatest historical influence is probably the Byzantine era. AS he settles into life on the island other opportunities present themselves, he is first offered a position as a teacher and then the post of Press Advisor to the Colonial secretary is advertised. It was with this friend that he truly came to understand the meaning of the word ‘kopiaste’, or Cypriot hospitality.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus : Life on a Mediterranean Island

However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the Yorkshire village where he was born, travelling as a 'modern troubadour', without a penny in his pockets. A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet. For centuries, the battle for the Mediterranean has been fought on this tiny spit of land, and now Cyprus threatens to rip itself in half.

I managed to thump through it, mostly for the sake of Cyprus which didn't fail to charm Durrell, much to his credit I must say. Into this escalating conflict steps Lawrence Durrell—poet, novelist, and a former British government official.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus | Faber

A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will--whatever we may think. It is to bring down upon the community in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that the fury and resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further recruits. Then, in keeping with brief references in his little brother's book, he picks a high point in his house to slowly eat grapes and crack the whip on Greek workmen who may be lingering to tell the stories he loves so much. Some cry for union with Athens, others for an arrangement that would split the island down the middle, giving half to the Greeks and the rest to the Turks.But even this gets topped (in my eyes at least) when the author does not see the irony in the fact that his friend Antonis is grateful that his son will be off to get educated in England, rather than join the insurrection against the British. The question of Enosis--independence from Britain and union with Greece begins to overwhelm all the other questions, including those of safety. The farce intensifies when toward the end of the book Laurence Durrell engages in serial incantation of Patrick Lee Fermor’s name to invoke Greek-English friendship, lionizes John Harding (who according to Wikipedia “instituted a number of unprecedented measures including curfews, closures of schools, the opening of concentration camps, the indefinite detention of suspects without trial and the imposition of the death penalty for offences such as carrying weapons, incendiary devices or any material that could be used in a bomb”) and I thought it had climaxed with the image of an English officer boarding a plane to Cyprus clutching a copy of the Iliad. Lose yourself in this classic prize-winning memoir of life in 1950s Cyprus on the brink of revolution by the legendary king of travel writing and real-life family member of The Durrells in Corfu. I think the first person narrative gives one an excellent character to follow through the story (though whether it might be a close portrayal of the author I have no idea) and see the countryside through, as it were.

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e. the unity of Greece and Cyprus) written in the 1950s when Turkish and Greek Cypriots were at war.Principle amongst them is the depth of his knowledge of plants, animals and geography, and the way in which they provide texture and life to the text – rocks, flowers, animals, landscapes, people (their characters observed like an array of species) all permeate his writing, giving its form and its dynamic; the importance of natural history to his prose adds irony to his occasional dig at his zoological brother Gerald (who appears in the book to yet again turn a Durrell house into a menagerie). And in 1953, when Durrell moves to Cyprus, the local demands for Enosis, or union with Greece, are becoming increasingly strident. It had already circulated, or been passed back and forth between great powers, East and West, many times. I first encountered Laurence Durrell as the bossy older brother in Gerald Durrell's books about his family's life on the Greek island of Corfu (My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts, and Relatives; The Garden of the Gods).

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: Life on a Mediterranean Island

Valentine's and shite like that but in the sense of aesthetic experience with feelings of awe, and apprehension while experiencing the sublimity of nature). In the first third, helped immeasurably by his knowledge of Greek, Durrell is getting settled in, and it's a sort of Cypriot Under a Tuscan Sun.Coming out of the Colonial Office, I knew at once that the Empire was all right by the animation of three African dignitaries. Well he did; "As a conservative, I fully understand, namely; 'If you have an Empire, you just can't give away bits of it as soon as asked. and thank's to EOKA the Turkish Nationalism was rekindled and the Pogroms in Constantinople occurred in September 1955.