Amber-coloured wines
There are some wonderful descriptions of Cretan wine - and its effects - in Zorba the Greek, but none of...
On memorizing poetry
A few years ago I wrote this piece on memorising poetry. For World Poetry Day, I share it here in the hope it will...
A lyre-bird among carrion-crows
Well, if you're going to outshine your peers, let it be by such a striking margin. Here Leigh Fermor is...
Pepper-pot turrets
The description of these towers and turrets in the village of Kardamyli, which are a match for the mine's-bigger-than-yours competition...
Dungeon-like gloom
This gloom was no doubt accentuated by the blinding brilliance outside, and may even have been a soothing balm to...
How clever can you get?
I liked these piled up and shamelessly outrageous examples of cleverness, although of their various skills, the first is the...
Cloud-born apotheoses
The triologism caught my eye, but I like even more the play of light bouncing from a Venetian canal up...
Far-tinkling haze
I am trying to imagine, visually and aurally, a far-tinkling haze. As a way to distance yourself from any kind...
Lemon-coloured light
A warming, bright but not dazzling light, and streaming through gaps in snow-clouds too.
'The sky was loosening and lemon-coloured...
News, any news
I loved this eager old man stuck up a mountain, starved of company, starved of news. And in the age...
Night-capped Normans
Hard to think of the Normans as being 'night-capped' as in my English mind, they are more a memory of...
Yataghan-wielding chieftains
At least when Leigh Fermor first travelled to Mani in the Peloponnese, its inhabitants had a fearsome reputation among Greeks,...
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