William Golding and Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis in Thessaloniki

We once gave a dinner party for William Golding (1911-1993), who was visiting Thessaloniki to give a lecture on 'Belief and Creativity'.

William Golding on writing Lord of the Flies

We also invited Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis (1908-1993), and seated them next to each other, to encourage conversation (with an interpreter nearby, in case of need).

Who was to dominate the discussion between two fairly equally balanced literary egos?

There wasn't exactly a meeting of minds. Golding was travelling alone, and it's said he never felt comfortable if his wife wasn't travelling with him. It was around the time of the Falklands crisis, and of much student unrest in Greece.

Golding ventured the opinion that it was not much use having a navy unless one was prepared to use it.

 (from John Carey's biography, 2009, p. 421)

Cultural relations work can be hard-going, for the officials as well as for the writers and artists who have to endure all the PR, the interviews, readings and public appearances. Mind you, some of them love the travelling, and make good use of their experiences in their fiction (one thinks of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge).

Shortly after his Thessaloniki visit, Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He then had to move from Bowerchalke, his Wiltshire village, to Cornwall, to get away from all the inquisitive visitors, media people and PhD students. He was knighted in 1988.

But if I remember rightly, Pentzikis had the bigger ego. He was the local literary grandee, and a considerable artist, and he obviously expected Golding to respect that, and to defer to him.

I always found Pentzikis' sister, the distinguished poet Zoe Karelli (born 1901, died in 1998, at age 96), much more sympathetic and approachable.