Greece
Is this Greece’s finest wine since Homer strummed his lyre?
We were in deepest Dorset, l’Angleterre profonde. The weather was also typically English: inundations followed by counter-attacks from the Indian…
The real Greek: Lemonia reviewed
Lemonia lives in the old Chalk Farm Tavern in Primrose Hill, which is better known as the set of Paddington.…
My roots burnt with Greece
On 11 March this year my father passed away from prostate cancer after several weeks in a hospital in central…
The Olympics have become a celebration of human frailty
Coronis Embracing one’s vulnerability seems to have replaced the higher, faster, stronger ethos of the Olympics. The very frailty that…
The Greek wildfires and the failings of the state
The wildfires raging across Greece for what is by now more than a week, show no sign of abating. High…
An elegy on yachting
Patmos A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or…
The high and low life of John Craxton
Charm is a weasel word; it can evoke the superficial and insincere, and engender suspicion and mistrust. But charm in…
What Europe can learn from Greece's alliance with Israel
In the 21st chapter of his magisterial 1948 history of the Second World War, Winston Churchill began with an arresting…
Greece and Britain’s long history of fighting autocracy
As I write, it is mid-morning in Athens and fighter jets are roaring overhead. My windows rattle, the sky splinters,…
The myth of American freedom
Gstaad Imagine a beautiful, sexy woman, an Ava Gardner or a Lily James, with a wart on the end of…
The fall of Golden Dawn
The fall of Greece’s neo-Nazi party
Greece vs Turkey: tensions are rising in the Mediterranean
Greece and Turkey are in a battle for hegemony
How busy have restaurants been this summer?
The other Argos The Argos catalogue, known as the ‘Book of Dreams’, is no longer to appear in printed form.…
Lives of luxury for Sparta’s women
History is full of ‘ifs’ and the Spartan story fuller than most. If the 300 had not made their famous…
The way Greece has conducted itself in this pandemic is an example to us all
Aristophanes was a comic genius long before the Marx Brothers, but he also gave good advice to the Athenians: stop…
My bid to boost my carbon footprint
Inspired by Harry and Meghan I decided to get on a plane. I hadn’t been anywhere for so long it…
How Athenians would have broken the Brexit deadlock
It is said that our political system is ‘broken’ simply because the passions aroused by Brexit have effectively created a…
Standing on the Acropolis brings out the Greek in me
Athens I am struggling up the slippery marble steps of the Acropolis with the Geldofs and the Bismarcks. We gaze…
Lunch on Leonard Cohen Island: The Pirate Bar reviewed
The Pirate Bar is an oddity, even for this column: a bar and restaurant themed in homage to a pirate,…
Let’s choose our politicians by random selection
Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to…
Tantrums and a top-notch tabbouleh: Ergon House in Athens reviewed
Ergon House is an epicurean boutique hotel in downtown Athens. (I quote the blurb — I never write ‘boutique’ willingly.)…
A Greek tragedy: how the EU is destroying a country
‘Now Greece can finally turn the page in a crisis that has lasted too long. The worst is over.’ With…
The joy of a Greek summer
Some jerk know-nothing writes in an unreadable American newspaper that Greece is back — Athens, actually. He would, he’s an…
Greece Notebook
I have come to Greece in search of sanity over Brexit. Ostensibly it is a symposium to discuss relations between…
High life
I’ve stayed far away from the new barbarians with their choppers, tank-like cars, home theatres on board, and fridge-shaped super…
