In the third and final leg of his Magical Tour, John Kittmer takes us atop mountains he has yet to conquer, across inhospitable cliffs that plunge into turbid, inky waters. In my gloomier and lonelier moments in the ambassador’s office in the ugly concrete block of the Athens Embassy, I would part the bomb curtains at the wind...
Read moreCelebrated Greek artist Constantin Xenakis passed away in Paris on June 6, leaving behind a great body of work. His works reflected his own cultural influences and included the written script, symbols and codes of everyday life, traffic signs, alchemy, the zodiac, mathematical and chemical symbols, Egyptian hieroglyphics, letters from the...
Read morePeter Economides, the brand strategist whose work is focussed on change and the strategic responses to shifting culture, consumer habits and behaviour, gives us his reading of how we need to evolve into gentler, softer, more sensitive, more humane versions of ourselvesin our post-Covid world. His view is that brand strategy needs to be sp...
Read moreYannis Zervos is probably Athens' most colourful, entertaining story-teller, traversing continents and characters in his engaging prose. In Passage to Paradise, Hellenic Sketches of the Mind, so named for the delightfully appointed house and garden he grew up in, Zervos paints a vivid picture of life in post-war Greece and the incredibly ...
Read morePeter Poulos, Executive Director at The Hellenic Initiative harnesses his solitude in lockdown to raise funds for those hardest hit by the Covid pandemic. Over a month ago on March 23rd Athens went into a lockdown/quarantine which required each of us to notify the government with an SMS message when we needed to leave our home...
Read moreFrench ceramicist and artist Diane Alexandre’s sculpted beauty matches that of her creations - fired up to fragile perfection. With the Aegean blue and Apollonian light offering as much inspiration as Greek mythology, Diane’s aesthetic vernacular is shaped by that of her adopted home. Diane, you’re a multi-talented personality a...
Read moreMichael Ondaatje’s new novel, Warlight (shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Walter Scott Prize), opens with a scene where Nathaniel Williams is crouched over his desk, trying to pull together the threads of his fractured adolescence and declares, “As if I cannot see what is taking place in the dark beyond the movement of this pencil. T...
Read moreDimitris Dassios’ itinerant sartorial style brings alive the sensual vibrance of an Oriental souk with the meticulous tailoring of an Italian couture house. Swarovski crystals, semiprecious gems, Indian zari, cultivated pearls, intricate 19th century Turkish embroidery, mirrors and tassles – and over-sized flowers – find their way into hi...
Read moreBorn during the Spanish Civil War, author Miriam Frank was five years old when she boarded the famous Serpia Pinto in 1941, unaware that she and her mother Kate were escaping the round-ups, separations and extermination camps of Nazi Germany. By the age of 12, Miriam had fled two wars and lived in three continents and now divides her time...
Read moreAnthimos Ntagas reveals the everyday humour and magic that Athens hides, through his mind-bending compositions. He speaks to Sudha Nair-Iliades on the art of ‘capturing chance encounters between the city, its people and its street art.’ A day on the beach in the Pe...
Read moreCrime novelist Jeff Siger – whose 'trouble in paradise' murder mysteries get under the seamy underbellies of whitewashed Greek isles, presents his 10th book in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, Island of Secrets, set in his beloved Mykonos. Congratulations! “The Mykonos Mob”—now available in paperback as “Island of Secr...
Read moreArianna Huffington, Founder and CEO at Thrive Global advocates imagining a post-corona future where we seek transformation and renewal. "I wish it need not have happened in my time,” says Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. “So do I,” says Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we...
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