Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964

A video to announce this wonderful, fascinating book - Very highly recommended - one of my books of the year

About the authors:

Paul Genoni works with the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University. He is a former president of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, and co-editor (with Tanya Dalziell) of Telling Stories: Australian Life and Literature, 1935–2012 (2013).

Tanya Dalziell works in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of Settler Romances and the Australian Girl (2004), and co-editor (with Karen Welberry) of Cultural Seeds: Essays on the Work of Nick Cave (2009).


"Half the Perfect World tells the story of the post-war international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra. Most famously, it included renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his partner Marianne Ihlen, as well as many other artists and writers including the Australian literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston, who fostered this fabled colony.

Drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by the eyewitness photographs of LIFE magazine photo-journalist James Burke, Half the Perfect World reveals the private lives and relationships of the Hydra expatriates. It charts the promise of a creative life that drew many of them to the island, and documents the fracturing of the community as it came under pressure from personal ambitions and wider social changes. For all the unrealised youthful ambitions, internal strife and personal tragedy that attends this story, the authors nonetheless find that the example of these writers, dreamers and drifters continues to resonate and inspire".

The 2018 Hydra event conference included papers by other participants on a number of writers I had met personally, such as Dilys Powell, Joice Loch and Dimitris Tsaloumas, which made it especially interesting. Sir Maurice Bowra was also mentioned.


Hydra in 50 Photos, Pappas Post