Abstemious in the matter of drinks the Greeks produce their own light wines and cognacs in abundance. Yet during our whole stay here we have seen a drunk person not more than once; and more endearing still, we have discovered that these people have so delicate a palate as to be connoisseurs of cold water. The glass of water appears everywhere; it is an adjunct to every kind of sweetmeat, and even to alcohol. It has a kind of biblical significance. When a Greek drinks water he tastes it, and pressing it against the palate, savours it. The peasants will readily tell you which wells give the sweetest water, while even the townspeople retain a delicate taste in water, and are able to recognize the different sources from which the little white town handcarts (covered in green boughs) are replenished.
Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell. A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra, Faber And Faber, London 1978, p. 97.
Checking out the red wines in the Theotoky Estate in Ropa Valley, on my birthday. September 21st 2023(photo: Hennie Harinck)
Looking down from Mount Pantokrator towards Butrinto, Albania (photo: Peter Dicker)
About this day in 1937 the British writer Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) wrote the following lines:
Two days before Christmas we climbed the dizzy barren razorback of Pantocratoras to the monastery from which the whole strait lay bare, lazy and dancing in the cold haze. Lines of dazzling water crept out from Butrinto and southward, like a beetle on a plate, the Italian steamer jogged its six knots towards Ithaca. Clouds were massing over Albania, but the flat lands of Epirus were frosty bright. In the little cell of the warden monk, whose windows gave directly upon the distant sea, and the vague rulings of waves to the east, we sat at a deal table and accepted the most royal of hospitalities – fresh mountain walnuts and pure water from the highest spring; water that had been carried up on the backs of women in stone jars for several hundred fee.
Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell. A guide to the landscape and manners of the island of Corcyra, Faber And Faber, London 1978, p. 97.
From the left: Colin Stevenson, Bernhard Mayr, Elena Mayr, Lee Durrell, Peter Dicker (photo credit: Hennie Harinck)
During the Corfu Literary Festival last September we had the opportunity to attend a speech in which dr. Lee (McGeorge) Durrell MBE shone her light on the famous trilogy her late husband Gerarld dedicated to the island and the family he grew up in. Of The Corfu Trilogy millions of copies were sold and it was translated in many languages. A television series based on the trilogy was aired in four seasons between 2016 and 2019. Geralds work and that of his brother Lawrence (Prospero’s Cell) most likely have inspired early stage tourism to the island more than anything else. Quite rightfully their busts in bronze adorn the Bosketto Garden.
At the end of the evening – in the Corfu Public Library in the Old Fortress – publisher Bernhard Mayr introduced my wife Hennie and me to Lee Durrell and her partner Colin Stevenson. Looking back at the picture above I realize once more how literature transcends all borders and boundaries. Colin, a Scottish pilot; Bernhard, a German publisher; Elena his wife, a Ukrainian photographer; Lee, an American born writer; myself, a Dutch writer. The photograph, taken by Hennie, a Dutch writer. Further more in the evening’s programme were the Greek author Danai Dragonea en American author Craig Pomranz. How cosmopolitan can an island get?
A showcase in papas Spiros Monastiriotis’ private museum in Kavos, Corfu.
Eighty years ago this Saturday a remarkable chapter in the history of Word War II started to unfold. A crew of ten leaves on a mission with their B-17 Flying Fortress from a base in North Africa to a target near Athens, Greece. After bombing several airstrips, used by the Germans, they head west, bound for an allied airfield in southern Italy. Hit by German anti-aircraft two of the engines stop. As the third begins to falter the pilot decides to crashland in a flat marshland on the coast of the Greek island of Corfu. As they climb out of the ‘Liberator’ they are welcomed by a party of agricultural workers and much to their surprise addressed in English by their leader. None of the crew is hurt, but the bad news is the island has recently been occupied by the German army and soldiers may arrive on the spot within an hour.
During a short break the crew changes its military clothes for civilian but fails to destroy the aircraft by fire. Escorted by some of the locals they hurry on foot to a quiet place in the wooded hills on the Ionian site of the island, far from the crash site. Here they wait until the Germans give up the search operations from their nearby fortresses. The ten aviators are separately hidden with families in the villages of Lefkimmi. Nine of the ten are soon bedridden with malaria to be saved only by quinine, obtained by a brave citizen on the black market in Corfu Town. They recover, but suffer hard from isolation and the lack of free movement, installed on them because of the risk of discovery by the enemy soldiers.
The preparations for their escape from the island are well on the way, but they hardly escape treason by an Italian defector, hastily retreating to the hills once more. A German raid on the villages leads to nothing, not even when they threaten to execute ten local hostages. No-one talks. Not even the ten year old boy who was the aviators’ messenger and who merely exclaims ‘Long live Greece’ at his staged execution.
On the last day of 1943 the airmen are ferried over to free Albania by partizans. A hazardous and bedazzling two and a half months of hiking back and forth over iced mountain paths await them, escaping Germans and fighting outlaws, frostbite and wild dogs. On a beach near Parga in northern Greece the airmen manage to board a ship with destination liberated southern Italy. In the course of the spring all crew members are united with their loved ones in the US. An unprecedented feat for a crash-landed bomber plane in Europe in WWII. One that would have been impossible without the bravery and self-sacrifice of the villagers of Lefkimmi and the partizans of Corfu. And indeed the unconditional and heroic teamwork of the ten Americans.
The story of ‘Lefkimmi 1943’ seems very well suited for adaptation as a tv-series or a full length movie. What’s more the relics and memorabilia that papas Spiros Monastiriotis in Kavos has collected from the historic B-17 and its crew deserve being on display in a proper museum. So we will not forget. https://corfuismyisland.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/aircraft-down-75-years-ago/
Papas Spiros Monastiriotis in a corner of his museum with Richard Koskinas (left).
With deep regret I learned the other day that Dutch speleologist René van Vliet died on March 24th in a hospice in The Hague, where he had been admitted just the day before. Only two weeks before his untimely death at the age of 47 René had been diagnosed with incurable cancer of intestines, liver and abdomen. His next exploration trip to Corfu was scheduled for April 17 – April 28.
René van Vliet explored and described 213 caves on Corfu, some of which he was the first to discover. His legacy is visible in the wonderful website www.speleocorfu.com. René’s brother Fred is determined to keep this website going and available for interested travellers, scholars and scientists alike. Dutch readers may check out the last (8 pages) article that René wrote; it was published in the first edition in 2020 of Griekenland Magazine. He received a copy of the magazine only days before he passed away.
René van Vliet will be buried in ‘s-Gravenzande on Monday March 30th. He will be remembered by many, both in Corfu and The Netherlands. About his work: see my previous post.
The house in Arseniou Street in Corfu Town where the poet Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857) lived for the longest part of his life.
His residence in Arseniou Street, the high boulevard along the seaside, offered poet Dionysios Solomos one of the most spectacular views in Corfu Town. Now a museum, inside you can picture him looking down at the horsedrawn carts rattling by, the sailing ships passing to the nearby Old Port against the background of the lush green of Vido Island. No wonder Solomos called this house his home longer than any other, until his dying day in February 1857.
The poet of Greece’s national anthem was born in 1798 on Zakynthos, an Ionian island, one or two days sailing southward from Corfu. He was the son of a sixty years old count and his sixteen years young housekeeper. Father recognized the son by marrying his mother on the night before he died, in 1807. The next year young Dionysios was sent to Italy, where over the next ten years he attended the Lyceum in Cremona and the University of Pavia. While studying literature he started writing sonnets in Italian and after his return to Zakynthos he continued his poetic work.
War of Independence After several attempts to write poetry in Greek in 1823 he finished the 158 four-line verses of his Hymn to Liberty, saluting the Greek War of Independence (after centuries of Ottoman rule), that started two years earlier. In this work he addresses a personified image of Liberty, reborn and renewed out of “the sacred bones of the Greeks”. It was published in Messolonghi in 1824 and a year later in Paris and soon his fame as a poet spread. He went on writing lots of material, although – driven by his quest for perfection – a good deal of his poetry and prose remained fragmentary and incomplete.
Settling in Corfu In 1828 Solomos settled in Corfu, the capital of the Ionian Islands, and soon became the center of a circle of intellectual admirers and friends like composer Nikolaos Mantzaros, the poet Iakovos Polylas and others. He reworked older poems and experimented with metrical form, rhyming and non-rhyming verses, lyrical, epic and satirical poetry. He read it to his friends, but would publish very little of it.
In 1851 he suffered the first of a few strokes, after which he rarely left his house at Arseniou street. At his death by apoplexy at the age of 59 the Ionian Parliament interrupted its work and a state of public mourning was declared. In 1864 the Ionian Islands were reunited with the new Greek state and a year later Solomos’ old friend Mantzaros set the first three stanzas of his Hymn to Liberty to music and made a different choral version for the entire poem.
The three stanzas (later reduced to two) were soon promoted to become Greece’s national anthem. That same year Solomos’ remains were transferred to Zakynthos. The irony of history: how Solomos would have loved to see the reunion of his islands with Greece and the promotion of his hymn to the highest national level! In 1966 the hymn also became the national anthem of Cyprus.
Hymn in translation In translation the Greek national anthem would be something like this:
I recognize you by the fearsome sharpness of your sword, I recognize you by the look in your eyes forcefully defining the land.
From the sacred bones of the Hellenes arisen, and brave again as before, Welcome, o welcome, Liberty!
Now this may sound a little patriotic and moralising but we have to keep in mind that Solomos – who when he wrote this was save in Zakynthos under British protection, while the struggle for independence was raging on the mainland and the Peloponnese – desperately wanted to do his bit. By raising his pen instead of the sword. While one of his aims surely was to incite a national conscience. He would have been so proud to know these lines above are still taught at school to every boy and girl in Greece and Cyprus.
Today Solomos is considered as the national poet because of his important legacy to Greek literature and national identity, connecting the early traditions to modern literature and promoting the Greek language spoken by the common people (the “dhimotiki”) as a literary vehicle.
Two museums It may be that Solomos’ most famous work was not written in Corfu; without the music of Corfiot Nikolaos Mantzaros it would not have been promoted to the national anthem. So to get the full story it is a good idea to visit the former Solomos residence – now a museum – and then stroll from Arseniou 1 to Nikiforou Theotoki 10, where Nikolaos Mantzaros, the first director of the Corfu Philharmonic Society, is honoured in the society’s museum. For the opening hours of the Solomos Museum: check the website.
Prince Philip at his 98th birthday. Mon Repos in Corfu, where he was born in 1921.
Next summer 99 years ago the German Princess Alice van Battenberg in the Mon Repos Palace in Corfu gave birth to her fifth child. After four girls she and her husband, Prince Andreas of Greece on June 10th 1921 welcomed a son, Philippos. By birth he was Prince of Greece and Denmark. From the balcony on the second floor of the small, but elegant palace, in his mother’s arms young Philippos will have seen the eternal blue of the Ionian Sea and the mountains of Epiros beyond. For two summers only. The Greek monarchy was young and there was revolution in the air.
On September 22, 1922, Philippos’ uncle, King Constantine I of Greece, was forced to abdicate the throne. The military government arrested Prince Andreas. In December Andreas was banned from Greece for life and settled with his family in Paris. In 1930 Philips’ mother was committed to a psychiatric institution, while his father relocated to Monaco, maintaining limited contact with his family. He died in Monaco in 1944, while Princess Alice spent most of the rest of her life in Athens.
From palace to palace Being educated in France, Germany and Scotland Philippos – now Philip – excelled in the Royal Naval College and served in the British Navy during World War II. Preparing for his marriage in 1947 with Princess Elizabeth he abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles. On the morning of his wedding he was made Duke of Edinburgh. Five years later when Elizabeth succeeded her father King George VI, as Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Philip was a Prince once more. Quite a way to go from a revolution in Greece to the British throne, and from Mon Repos Palace in Corfu to Buckingham Palace in London. In 1967 Philip’s mother Alice came to stay in Buckingham Palace, where she would die two years later at the age of 84.
Mon Repos Palace Unlike Buckingham Palace Mon Repos Palace and its lovely park are easily accessible for the public. The palace, now housing a museum and rooms in use by the Corfu Municipality, was built in 1824-1826 to serve the British Lord High Commissioner Frederic Adams and his Corfiot wife Nina Palatianou. When the famous German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann visited Mon Repos in July 1868, it took him no time at all to identify the park and surroundings with the ancient city of Palaiopolis and the very spot of Mon Repos as the place where the mythical palace of Homer’s Phaeacians would have been.
There is no proof of Schliemann’s claim to this day, though in the park several ancient buildings have been uncovered, like the Temple of Hera, one of the earliest archaic temples in Greece (610 BC). Built on top of Analipsis Hill it must have created an impressive view for ships entering the harbour of ancient Corcyra. Last Summer and in the Summer of 2018 archaeological excavations have been conducted in the park. They yielded some interesting finds, but nothing spectacular. New excavations have been announced for 2020.
Photo left: Albert R. Broccoli, Roger Moore and Michael G. Wilson at Danilia village, Corfu during a break while shooting For Your Eyes Only. Photo right: action scene on Agios Georgios Beach, Summer 1980.
One of the all time favourite James Bond movies, For Your Eyes Only, duration 127 minutes and directed by John Glen, was released on July 2nd 1981. Worldwide it made 195 million US dollars and effectively saved United Artists from financial ruin. When British actor Roger Moore – in 2003 knighted by Queen Elizabeth II – had become Sir Roger Moore he would clearly remember which car he liked best in the seven Bond movies he played in: “The Citroën 2CV was my favourite.”
So where did he drive the 2CV? Corfu was one of the primary locations in For Your Eyes Only. We see James Bond and Bond-girl Melina Havelock (French actress and model Carole Bouquet) in sceneries ranging from the Agios Spyridon church, the Old Fortress and the Mandraki marina in Corfu Town, to the Vlacherna monastery and Kanoni island, Danilia village, the Achilleion casino, and Agios Georgios beach. And the narrow, winding roads of course that turn the odd car chase into something else!
Yellow Citroën 2CV Let’s watch Bond and Melina being chased and gunned at in a yellow – no, not a submarine – but a Citroën 2CV through the rough terrain of olive groves. They end up in the narrow streets of the village Pagoi (in Corfu’s hilly northwest, between Palaiokastritsa and Agios Georgios). Melina driving escapes from running straight into a bus by turning the car upside down, near a café. Bond to Melina: “Take the low road… not too low.”
Bystanders rush in to roll the car upright again and on goes the epic chase, now with 007 behind the wheel: “You don’t mind if I drive, do you?” Next thing we see is bus nr. 44 continue its journey to… Madrid – as this part of the movie story is taking place in Spain. (Are you still with me?)
Roger Moore (1927-2017) lived to be almost ninety years of age. Carole Bouquet (playing the character of Melina Havelock) was only 23 when the movie was shot, being thirty years his younger. She is acting to this day.
Spiros Bond 007 Café Bar Want to visit the café opposite the spot where the famous yellow 2CV went upside down? Spiros Bond 007 Café Bar does not just provide a terrace with a (virtual) view of that spectacular film scene, inside you will find many photographs, posters and memorabilia reviving For Your Eyes Only. You will find the café (actually a restaurant as well) in Pagoi, on the provincial road Arkadades-Agios Georgios. Want to stir up your appetite and see the car chase (4min. 40 sec.)? Follow this link to YouTube.
The interior of the café, not ‘for your eyes only’
A number of buildings were reduced to rubble in the earthquake (photo EPA)
The official death toll of the 6.4-magnitude earthquake that hit northwestern Albania in the early morning of Tuesday 26 November has been confirmed as 51. Some 2000 people were injured and 14.000 are homeless as a result of the initial earthquake and shocks on the day after.
The member states of the European Union are organising a special donor conference, scheduled for January 2020. The authorities and the public in Corfu have sent several truckloads to neighbouring Albania with essentials like food, drinking water, blankets and tents.
Nine arrests The Albanian government has made a reservation of a 120 million euro for restoration work and has made an appeal to the international community for (financial) support. Meanwhile a prosecutor has brought charges to 17 builders, architects and owners of real estate for causing the death of the 51 victims. They are suspected of neglecting rules and standards for safe building. Nine of the seventeen suspects have been arrested, some others are believed to be on the run. For previous posts about the earthquakes: see 26 November and 27 November.
Erikousa, an unspoilt islet just eight nautical miles from Sidari in North Corfu
Erikousa, one of the Diapontian islands off the northwestern tip of Corfu, for seventy years kept a secret. From June 1944 until the end of WW II the few hundred inhabitants of a 5 km2 islet managed to keep a Jewish family hidden from the nazi’s. Even when German soldiers came searching from door to door, they bravely cooperated to not give the secret away. Each at the risk of losing their lives.
After the war the surviving family emigrated to Israel and the bravery of the Erikousa population would have been lost in time. If it wasn’t for a Greek grandmother, sharing the story of her life with her American born granddaughter. Who happened to be Emmy Award winning writer and producer Yvette Manessis Corporon. Yvette decided to honour the brave activities of her grandma and the other islanders in a novel. Five years of hard work later – besides her professional and family activities in New York – Harper Books published When The Cypress Whispers (2014).
Fatal June 9th 1944 In her novel Yvette Manessis Corporon interweaves myths and magic with the tragic events of the Summer of 1944 . On June 9th the German occupying force starts rounding up the Jewish inhabitants of Corfu. Almost everyone of the 2.000 men, women and children is deported off the island in small boats. 91% of them will be executed in the concentration camps. A Jewish tailor, Shabtai (in Greek: Savvas), just in time escapes the pogrom in town. He takes his daughters to Erikousa. He knows his way well out there as he visited the tiny adjacent islands regularly to sell clothing and offer his tailoring service.
The inhabitants of Erikousa welcome Shabtai and his family, share the little food there is and by constantly hiding them save some of the very few Jewish lives in WW II Corfu. A story of courage, loyalty, kindness and hope, but it does not end with the novel. From the moment she started to work on her novel it was author Yvette’s ambition to let her family and the people of Erikousa know what had become of tailor Shabtai and his family.
My Heritage Armed with just the first names of the family members after several attempts Yvette tries her luck with the Holocaust Museum in Jeruzalem and the platform for family history My Heritage. The founder of this platform, Gilad Japhet, helps her out and identifies Shabtai’s three daughters, a living grandson and several other descendants in Israel and Los Angeles. None of whom knew anything about the way their ancestors survived wartime in Corfu/Erikousa.
In 2016 Yvette arranges a meeting between descendants of both the Jewish survivors and some Erikousa families. Yvette produced a film documentary about her quest, Searching for Savvas and also wrote another book: Something beautiful happened.
In the last part of this second book Yvette admirably deals with a cruel tragedy. A brutal murder took place three days after the meeting that meant so much to the new generations of Israelis, Greeks and Greek Americans. Yvette’s 14 year old nephew and his grandfather were killed by a neonazi gunman in a parking lot in Kansas, who was out to kill Jews. Confronting her with the question: can we defeat great evil?
EXTRA Yvette Manessis Corporon currently works as a Senior Producer with the syndicated entertainment news show, EXTRA. She lives in New York with her husband and two children, but her heart is also somewhere else: “Erikousa and Corfu are not just the setting of When The Cypress Whispers, they are truly my favourite places on Earth. There is a magical quality to these islands that I think everyone should experience at least once in their lives.”
When The Cypress Whispers was translated in 13 languages. The sequel Something beautiful happened (2017) so far was published in English, Hebrew and Serbian. More information is to be found on the website of Yvette Manessis Corporon. The role of My Heritage is explained in a short video (6 min., 23 sec.), and the family members in Israel can be seen in another video (7 min., 10 sec.).
Yvette Manessis Corporon and her two novels, inspired by the brave inhabitants of Erikousa, saving the lives of a Jewish family during WW II.
Corfu is my Island 