Vitsa Carnival Party

There may have been 40cms of snow all around, which prevented the bonfires from being lit, but the carnival party warmed everyone up. It was the last night of carnival. Mulled wine and hot bean soup: the music was even hotter! It even got me dancing with my snow boots on.

Congratulations to the Politistikos Syllogos!

The Ionian Islands and Epirus: a talk about the book

http://www.corfuland.gr/el/biblio/corfu-books-kerkyra/paroysiasi-biblioy-the-ionian-islands-and-epirus-a-cultural-history-03-03-2010.html

Corfuland.gr is carrying an item in Greek about my forthcoming talk at the Durrell School of Corfu on March 3rd (copy the link above).

I will post the press release in English towards the end of the month, when the book will be in the Signal Books warehouse.

Corfuland.gr is calling this a book launch or presentation, but it will be more of a general introduction to the book and the approach I took in writing it.

I am very grateful to Richard Pine for the opportunity to give this talk.

In the meantime, I'm in Zagori with 25 cms of snow. I hope I can dig myself out in time for the talk! I'm amazed we have electricity again, and intermittent access to the internet (by dial-up phone modem).

Who is the painter?

The book catalogue gives the game away. It's a detail of a watercolour drawing by Oscar Epfs, a pseudonym of Lawrence Durrell. Other works by this artist are reproduced in "Lawrence Durrell, The Big Supposer, A Dialogue with Marc Alyn" (1973). Durrell told Alyn (p. 101) "I've always done water-colours. When I was about twenty I lived on a Greek island with a young painter. It was then that I started to look at things through watercolours. When I went to Paris, Miller encouraged me...Miller taught me how to paint masterpieces."

Epfs/Durrell may not be a painter of masterpieces, but it is high time that Corfu hosted an exhibition of his paintings, perhaps alongside those of Henry Miller.

From the Archives: When I met The Rolling Stones

Sir Mick Jagger deserved his Knighthood.

"Sticky Fingers" was one of their great albums ("Wild Horses", "Brown Sugar", "You Gotta Move" etc).

Mick could also be a perfect diplomat, as he was at this State Reception in Melbourne in March 1995. So were the other Stones. It was an honour to meet them (it's not me in the photo with them,by the way, it's the Premier of Victoria).

Not the most likely place to meet the Rolling Stones, perhaps!

Arise, Sir Mick!

From the archives: Honouring Yannis Ritsos

A photograph from 1984, Thessaloniki:

Honouring the Fiftieth Anniversary of Yannis Ritsos's first book of poetry.

Preparing for the evening's event (above).

An article from Thessaloniki newspaper, 24 October, 1984  (below)

Allied Bombing Raids, Corfu

I've been reading an interesting and well-researched book in Greek, "Kerkyra, September 1943" (1996,1999) by George Athanasainas, which was awarded the prize of the Academy of Athens.

Many people do not realise that, apart from the appallingly destructive German incendiary bombings of Corfu in September 1943, there were also Allied bombing raids such as those in June 1944 (said to be a diversion from the Normandy landings), during which the Panagia Mandrakina church was destroyed, and earlier American bombings such as the P-38 attack on the transport ship Mario Rosselli (anchored in the harbour near Vido) on 10 October 1943, which may have claimed over a thousand victims (killed either by the explosions or by drowning), Italian prisoners of war who had been loaded on the ship by the Germans for transportation to Patras and onwards to concentration camps.

Some Corfiots were hit or injured by "friendly fire" during various Allied raids, my father-in-law amongst them (when visiting Lefkimmi).

Another important book is Sven Lindqvist's "A History of Bombing", 2001. He points out that the Italians dropped the first bomb from an aeroplane. It "exploded in an oasis outside Tripoli on November 1, 1911".

The photograph above of a bomb dropping- not on Corfu, but on Verona, Italy, on 28 January 1944, was taken by a US Air Force airman. Rapporto del bombardamento su Verona del 28/01/1944:"Gli obbiettivi del bombardamento sono segnati con delle croci, i cerchietti segnano i punti dove sono cadute le bombe."

How much lasting bitterness is caused by events of this nature...

I discussed it at length with my old friend Dr. Flavio Andreis in Verona, when he invited me to give a lecture on the Blues as Artform at the Italy-USA Cultural Association, in the beautiful Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona, in April 2008.

A virtual tour of Panagia Mandrakina