Grèce

Photos of Tzeli Hadjidimitriou  (CD included)  Pictures and views of the sea. The waters and the ruins – signs of a long-gone human presence, which measured itself with myth and reality, faced the elements of nature, created, and then abandoned… The human presence dominates, by conscious design of the photographer. “Kythera” magnetically draw the photographic lens to those moments of nature and light which give off silence. The book is in search of the soul of the island, it stops at local history, going through travellers’ writings and monks’ chronicles, it persistently demands to bring the true island to the surface. «Elle vient, elle approche, elle glisse amoureusement sur les flots divins qui ont donne le jour a Cytheree... Mais que dis-je ? devant nous, la-bas, a l'horizon, cette cote vermeille, ces collines empourprees qui semblent des nuages, c'est l'ile meme de Venus, c'est l'antique Cythere aux rochers de porphyre : Κυθείρη πορφυρούσα ... ... Aujourd'hui cette ile s'appelle Cerigo, et appartient aux Anglais.». This extract from a text by Gerard de Nerval gives the tone of Tzelli Chatzidimitriou’s photographic choices: Cerigo with its "caves where the waves dive in stormy weather", the "deserted look of the coastline", the ruined walls of abandoned houses, the "small church of Mertidia" from which "the so-called Algerian pirates seized everything they could". The book is a result of Tzelli’s exciting acquaintance with Kythera. Her excursion to untrodden parts of the island, where history has remained graven on the stone walls and the remote beaches, away from the influence of modern life, have shown her the way to the untouched soul of Kythera. The winter with the strong winds, the spring in Karavas and in Mitata create images which meet together with the half-erased wall paintings of the churches. Beside them, unique architectural forms and unforgettable views. And above all, the colours of the sea and the rocks, hidden beaches, sea caves, a deep blue, and the foam of the sea, pure white, gives birth to Aphrodite and brings the myth to back to life. The travellers’ texts and the monks’ chronicles allow the reader to imagine Gerard de Nerval’s voyage, to learn about the shipreck of the Mentor and the French revolution through the everyday life of the local inhabitants of the period. The music of Marisa Koch, the prologue to this book, surrounds the images like the clouds which cover the island in order to hide Aphrodite’s nudity and her secret loves. “Fata Morgana”, Nikos Kavvadias’ mirage and the exciting setting to music by Marisa Koch lead the reader on to the eternal myth of Kythera.

In the tradition of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Geoff Dyer, a Grammy-winning producer discovers a powerful and ancient folk music tradition.

In a dark record shop in Istanbul, Christopher King uncovered some of the strangest—and most hypnotic—sounds he had ever heard. The 78s seemed to tap into a primal well of emotion inaccessible to contemporary music. The songs, King learned, were from Epirus, an area straddling southern Albania and northwestern Greece and boasting a folk tradition extending back to the pre-Homeric era. Lament from Epirus is an unforgettable journey into a musical obsession which follows a genre back to the roots of song itself. As King hunts for traces of two long-lost virtuosos, he tells the story of the Roma people who pioneered Epirotic folk music and whose descendants continue the tradition today. His journey becomes an investigation into song and dance’s role as a means of spiritual healing—and what this may reveal about music’s original purpose.

What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a force to fear a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient monkey business" to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really get" the Romans' jokes?

Who is Theophrastus, and why should we care?Once, he was the equal of Plato and Aristotle. Together he and Aristotle invented science. Alone he invented Botany. The character of the Wife of Bath is his invention, the Canterbury Tales as a whole, perhaps, the product of his inspiration. When Linnaeus was developing our modern system of plant taxonomy, it was Theophrastus' work on plants that he used as a basis. So how could one man do so much and still sink almost without a trace?This is the story of a journey to find him and bring him back from oblivion. Looking for Theophrastus, in all the places he must have walked and lived, it tells how he and Aristotle, his friend and tutor, broke with the philosophical conventions of the Academy and left on their own adventure; of how together they invented what we now take for granted as the Natural Sciences; how, not content with that, they made the great experiment of applying philosophy directly to the practicalities of government through the tutoring of Alexander the Great; how they were disappointed and how, in the end, they returned to Athens and founded the famous Lyceum. Against the dramatic context of his time - the end of democracy in Athens and the rise of Alexander the Great; the great battles and vast territorial expansion that followed; the flowering of the philosophy schools on which so much of our culture and thinking is founded - and on, following his cultural legacy through to the modern day, it explores how we perceive, understand and, most importantly, how we relate to the world around us, questioning what we lose from our way of living when we forget those ancients who first taught us how to see.

Lost in the Wilds of Greece tells of a love affair between the author and the vast wilderness areas still to be found in Greece. Travelling with her horse, George, she chronicles her encounters with the wild itself, and the people who still live there and preserve the magnificent landscape by using the farming methods that first shaped it.

She rode through the wildest parts of Greece while exploring from east to west and from south to north. She describes breathtakingly lovely countryside, and also records her dismay at the loss of much that is beautiful. Sleeping rough most of the time, she managed to keep her camera dry enough to take some great photos.

Brought up in England, Penny came to Greece forty years ago to teach English. But she lost her heart to the mountains and eventually broke away from civilization and rode out to find the freedom that only the wilderness can bestow. She is proud that because of these rides she became a member of the Long Riders' Guild and was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

172 colour photographs accompany the text.

Its great streets and mansions, the marketplace, the stadiums, the sanctuaries were silent as if enchanted. There was no unrest or disturbance. The same city in the morning would have been full of life, the usual, daily tasks. Craftsmen renowned for their metalwork, their wall-painting, the ornamental floors of pebbles, would have been starting work. Beautiful ladies in gold-embroidered garments would have left behind them as they passed the expensive scent of myrrh from Arabia. The ovens in the courtyards would be baking crisp loaves. Pella would have lived each day as it had before. New, proud, well-built. And yet King Alexander lived no longer... Nea Nikomideia, Aeane, Sindos, Aegae, Pella, Dion... An exploration in the steps of gods and men, in the myths and history of Macedonia, from prehistoric to Early Christian times, based on ancient authors and on modern archaeological research.

The hillsides of Attica are stony and arid. Over-grazed in the past by goats and sheep, they have few trees and are covered in dense, prickly scrub. Relentless sun and often strong winds prevail for five months of the year, but in the autumn and spring months the miracle of the extraordinary variety and beauty of the Greek flora is revealed to the discerning eye. It was on such a hillside that the English woman Jaqueline Tyrwhitt — Harvard University professor, town planner of international renown and amateur botanist — chose to make a garden. This book is the story of the making of that garden and a distillation of what she learnt and observed about the plants that grew there, a book which she wrote (to use her own words) 'to assist other people wishing to make gardens in places with a "Mediterranean climate", believing that anything that grew under the difficult conditions prevailing on this Greek hillside would be almost certain to grow better elsewhere.' The garden that she created was different from most other Greek gardens at that time, in the 70s and 80s, for in addition to cultivated garden plants she wanted to include in it, and to sustain, encourage and introduce in the surrounding hillside, as much native Greek flora as she could. This book describes month by month the plants that grew, thrived or merely survived there, and her vivid descriptions of those plants reveal a great sensitivity to the delicate beauty of the natural world combined with a plantswoman's integrity. With an equally sensitive and observant eye she also describes the events and activities — the agricultural life, the feasts and festivals — of her neighbours and the nearby village.

Epictetus (c. 55-135 AD), of Hierapolis (Phrygia), was a Stoic philosopher. In his "Manual on the Art of Living" gives explicit advice on how to live. The "Manual" is a collection of principles that together provide a philosophy for everyday life. The basis of philosophy is self-knowledge. The integrity, the self-management and the personal freedom are the main points that Epictetus focuses on. Epictetus was born into slavery, but he remained free, he lived in poverty, but he remained happy. By putting into practice all his wise instructions, man can conquer virtue and become happy.