A fine wine
What a wonderful scene, a simple lunch washed down with a local wine the colour of molten amber, and intriguingly, ‘pumice-bedded’. Savour another such moment, celebrated by Zorba the Joyous. Then we stepped out to a terrace hung out over the blue chasm,...
Sea-drenched wind
I re-discover this triologism as we emerge from days of rain-drenched wind, waking up to a lush-verdant garden and landscape.  I also like the ‘lopped-off wave-tops’. But the air was almost as full of sea-drenched wind and lopped-off wave-tops as it had...
As softly as …
What a place, what a time, the two idyllic years Durrell spent in Rhodes after the war. His account is full of lyrical descriptions of scenes and sounds, and what could be more enchanting than having your days drop in as he describes. In Rhodes the days drop as...
Intimations of radiance
Listening time: 3 minutes.An intricate description of the effect an ancient temple can work on the spirit – a falling away of complication and anxiety and a spilling over of clarity and hope. I had such a feeling when a handful of us were allowed to roam...
Marrow-meltingly sweet
Wish you as many doses of such sweetness as you need. And what a stark contrast to another marrow-related triologism, from Jane Eyre. How sweet it all was, marrow-meltingly sweet!  Source: Louis Golding, Good-bye to Ithaca (London: Hutchinson, 1955), p....
Ink-blue water
As the logos on this website testify, I’m an ink-geek, and love inky similes. Here is another one, about the sky rather than the sea.  A small breeze sent up a flurry over all the ink-blue water. Source: Louis Golding, Good-bye to Ithaca (London: Hutchinson,...
Hare-bell sea
A lyrical description of the Greek island of Thera, bursting with flowers and trees, and all sloping down to a soft lilac-tinged blue sea. But there is a delicate order, too, imposed by tracery of asphodel and grape-hyacinth, purple mallow and coppery dandelion, by...
Brandy-ball eyes
I like the ‘brandy-ball’ amber of this clever chap’s gaze, and his space-butting arrangements. Enjoy another rather original description of a goat’s eyes, this one by Gavin Maxwell, or yet another, by Russell Hoban.  Do brandy-balls still...
Podcast review – Adam Nicolson’s The Mighty Dead
Listening time: 8 minutes.Enjoy this celebration of a favourite book by a favourite author about a favourite poet. Nicolson’s homage to Homer is a highly original take on the Iliad and the Odyssey, also providing fresh insights into the nature and continuing...
Sun-darkening arrows
Describing the shower of arrows at Thermopylae falling so thick and fast that they blot out the sun’s light. Leonidas, the Spartan king, fell with his men after a path around the pass they were defending was betrayed to the Persians. But for that betrayal it...
Sunlight dripping
Durrell’s various Greek island books and Miller’s Colossus of Maroussi enchanted me with their marvelous descriptions of people, places and the light of Greece. I was disappointed to have finished the last of them, Durrell’s Reflections on a Marine...
Stars like apples
Distant stars appearing so close you could reach up your hand and pick them, like apples in a tree. One of many lyrical descriptions in Golding’s 1955 Good-bye to Ithaca, which traces an Odyssean journey he has dreamt of for decades. The Cyclades were well...
