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Back in , when I was living in Scotland and working as a freelance feature writer, I wrote a piece for The Sunday Times about actor Donald Sutherland, mostly about his early years working in repertory at Perth Theatre, which was fascinating. It was a phone interview and the actor was very charming and kind, and even included my mother Mary in the conversation, as you will see below. He gave me a personal email address to contact him if I had any more questions, and I did some time later, though it had nothing to do with the original feature. However, it inspired a series of emails between us, sometimes touching, sometimes bizarre, and when it ended I kept all the emails. I felt it was a good time, the week he died, to write a small feature about our correspondence as my own small tribute to this Hollywood legend, and The Scottish Sunday Times published it. The feature included a picture of myself and my mother Mary, which, if she were still alive, would have thrilled her to bits. It was the first and only time my mother and I have been together in a newspaper article and I will always treasure it. I hope you enjoy it. I took the phone to the adjacent room in our Stirlingshire home in Scotland , where my mother was watching TV. It was one of the most bizarre episodes of my life. I sat in the corner of the room, listening nervously. The conversation went on and on, my mother giving the actor a guide to Perth streets and landmarks. It came about because Sutherland and I had just been discussing the nine months he spent in honing his craft at Perth Theatre. Sutherland — who died on Thursday, aged 88 — told me his time in repertory at the theatre had been his first big break in acting and had given him confidence. That means a lot to an actor. Sutherland, who has Scottish roots, had loved Perth, but had little affection for the draughty flat he rented near the theatre. For some inexplicable reason he wanted to know where exactly it was. Did I know? In the end I had to tap her gently on the shoulder and lure the phone back. The interview with Sutherland was one of the most memorable of my journalistic career. He was an engaging, thoughtful, entertaining character. At the end of it, he gave me his private email address, in case I had other queries. I emailed him not long afterwards, offering to send him an historic brochure given to me by Perth Theatre, including his repertory years. He was thrilled. Curiously, that was to be the start of a four-year, sporadic, email friendship with him. His missives were entertaining: quite formal to start with, sometimes candid, surprisingly tetchy, particularly when I asked him in if it was possible to interview him again for his upcoming film Cold Mountain , in which he starred with Nicole Kidman, a subject that was to prove contentious. It was one of the most enthralling moments of her life. My best to you, Donald Sutherland. Later in the year I wrote to him again, and among other things, gently nudged him about a possible interview for the upcoming Cold Mountain. Even just a phoner. Way too angry. Angry at what? Me for asking about Cold Mountain? No print journalists that I know of, other than yourself. I trust you will respect the privacy of that address. I know you will anyway. I immediately wrote back and apologised profusely for having, or so I thought, given offence over Cold Mountain. Not at all. Terribly mad. Good heavens no. Your letter was filled with affection. Donald Sutherland. Thank you for your kind letter. By the way, the pup is brilliant. Much affection. I wrote to him in to tell him how much I enjoyed his latest film, Pride and Prejudice , in which he played Mr Bennet, but heard nothing back, and that was sadly to be the end of our correspondence. Understandable, with his heavy schedule of films. I sensed through my fascinating correspondence with Sutherland that he was a peculiarly shy man, sensitive about his quirky looks. A touching admission, but women certainly were never averse to his looks, including his biggest fan, my dear mother Mary. Marjory writes novels and travel memoirs mostly set in Greece. All text and photographs copyright of the authors This applies to all posts on the blog. Jim gave me a shocked look, then turned back to the collector. Why would the woman do that? Then she waved us onward. Free tolls for incomers, do you think? Or maybe she liked your smiley face, Jim. He laughed. There really is something about Ireland, not just the fabulous scenery, the emerald green fields and far-flung villages. Their minds tick over to a different beat. The instructions never make sense, comical though they are. Driving in Ireland often reminds me of driving in Greece, where directions and rules are bendy things. But otherwise, I love the wickedly funny way the Irish pull the rug out from under any po-faced inquisitor, blagger, or visiting foreign anorak stressing over bucket lists. I love the craic, the way the Irish make ordinary things fabulously interesting and fun. We listened to the radio a lot while driving in Ireland and I was struck by the banter on phone-in shows. On one radio show there were two or three youngish presenters in the studio, talking about nothing much, but you just had to listen. Sure, she looked peeerfect! The Irish could read a shopping list on air and it would sound like James Joyce. The accent helps, of course. We were in Ireland, mainly travelling around the south west, the Beara peninsula in west Cork and up through county Kerry on part of what is known as the romantically named Wild Atlantic Way. This starts near Cork city and winds up the coast all the way to County Donegal, one of the most memorable routes in the world. There are also rugged beaches and tiny Dursey Island off the tip of the peninsula, which you can only reach by boat or the cable car on a long line suspended over a narrow but choppy channel. Just well; it looked skittery small, hoiked up and stationary on the mainland side. The drive along the north of the peninsula to Kenmare was also memorable, with turquoise coves and sheep dallying around their edges, dreaming of skinny dipping. After a day on the peninsula we took the winding, sometimes hairy, road back through the Caha mountains, over the Healy Pass to Adrigole, as a shortcut on the way home to our rental cottage. The cottage was in the shadow of the hill but with a bedroom window looking straight onto to the ever changing Bantry Bay, and a good reason not to get out of bed in the morning. But to contemplate a lie-in while in Ireland is to miss all the doolally stuff. The town is unfussy, with a nice harbour, a famous stone circle on its periphery, supposedly haunted by Iron Age ghouls. As a side issue to plundering Irish roots, he also tries to unpick what makes the Irish different and much loved around the world. One wall is adorned with yellowing newspaper clippings about the book and the author, and according to the manager, people still come here just to see what all the fuss had been about. The place still has lashings of appeal, eccentricity and blethery characters. The wall behind the bar is a muddle of mismatched wares: boxes of teabags, coffee, toothpaste … and mouthwash?! A nod perhaps to the days when the place doubled as a serious grocery, selling just about everything. And lastly there was also an ancient manual typewriter hunched against the back wall below football shirts and trendy book bags. Was this clapped-out typewriter actually used by McCarthy? I asked the pub manager. He scratched his head and kept his options open. The other top occurrence was stopping in Cork for three nights after we left Dublin. But the pub is nevertheless still wonderful in its way. The place was dead lively when we visited, the band going full throttle, the bar four people deep. The place had the kind of Irish vibrancy you hope to find there on just a brief trip but rarely do, so it was a huge achievement just lobbing by. The heel blister was huge, weepy, red raw and agony to walk on. I told my sorry tale to the pharmacist, an older lady with a kindly face. I was ushered into a small examination room. My heel was so padded and trussed up now I could have done a spot of River Dancing round the pharmacy, no trouble. You need to rest that foot for a few days. Ireland has changed out of sight over the past few decades but I hope it never loses it sociability, as McCarthy would say, its sense of humour, its eccentricities. And the Cork pharmacist still dispensing care and banter to all the blister sisters who stagger into her shop. It has stories this time from very different places including Ireland, a tale about staying in a Galway castle owned by a charismatic American couple plundering Irish roots big time. However, it has soldiered on with vigour and even found its way recently onto the syllabus of a Greek university course. But more of that later. It was during a British recession and a downturn in the newspaper industry, in which we both worked as journalists. And what an adventure it turned out to be, settling in a rented stone house in a hillside village in the remote, wild Mani region. It was a working village, raw in places, sometimes well beyond our comfort zone but perfect for our aim of living a Greek kind of life while we freelanced for various publications in Britain and Australia to help fund our odyssey. Greece was on the brink of meltdown due to its devastating economic crisis of The country, with massive debts, had to accept a bailout from the EU and punishing austerity to go with it. An ideal time for journalists perhaps, but not for a trouble-free stay in beautiful Greece. However, we went regardless and found ourselves in an ideal location, living amongst big-hearted goat and olive farmers. We made friends with many, particularly the inimitable Foteini, the eccentric goat farmer with her famously endearing taste for thick, clashing layers of clothing and rural mayhem. Ironically, it was my curious friendship with Foteini pushing my imperfect Greek to its limits that helped steer our path in the village. She also became an unlikely literary muse — who knew?! Her touching stories and her antics inspired me to start writing Feta , to record a rural way of life in the Mani peninsula one of the three that hang down from the southern mainland that I was sure was about to change forever. The first year in the village of Megali Mantineia, beneath the Taygetos mountains, exceeded all our expectations. It was challenging, fascinating, often hilarious, and sometimes downright frustrating. We dealt with macabre local customs, a health drama for Wallace, a hospital visit for Jim, critters scorpions, lots! At the end of the first year, we decided to stay longer in Greece, which grew to four years in all, living for the final year in the nearby Messinian peninsula, near Koroni. I wrote four best-selling books about our life in Greece, and two romantic suspense novels, also set in the Mani. Sometimes, she must have seen me at the window. It was usually with the same humorous lament. However, we did go now and then in winter, which I wrote about, including the memorable day Foteini came close to blowing up the shed. I had plenty of material for a book, from the adventures and mishaps of the first year, and I continued to add to the narrative over the next three years. Things Can Only Get Feta was published in by a small London publisher, during a long intermission in Scotland before we returned to Greece again. From the beginning, Feta did very well and sparked great interest, particularly in Greece in the summer of After doing a phone interview with the editor Sotiris Hadzimanolis of the Australian Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos, about our life in Greece and the book, Sotiris filed a similar piece to a Greek news outlet and from there, the story of our exploits went slightly viral. While there are many authors today, focusing on a much trendier, revitalised Greece post-crisis, 10 years ago the story of a foreigner having a love affair with Greece in turmoil was certainly more unusual. More than that, it struck a chord with long-suffering Greeks who had hitherto heard nothing but negative, often beat-up, reports in the international media. In publishing, be careful what you wish for! This was no small feat, working on an old laptop computer from a hillside house with just a mobile phone and poor wi-fi, or often, no wi-fi. But nevertheless, once re-published the book had a fresh gust of wind under its wings and continued to do very well. It may have been a presentment of sorts and in , I was thrilled to be contacted by a charming Greek girl called Panayiota, who told me that Feta and the following two memoirs had been offered on the syllabus of a literary course she attended in a northern Greek university, under the theme of how foreigner writers viewed Greek life during the crisis. She had written a paper on the subject. Or that Wallace may even have been the subject of some literary scrutiny. About time! One Facebook friend recently told me she has read Feta 10 times so far. Many reviews and comments have been humorous. It would be true to say that going to Greece and writing the books changed our lives for ever, and only for the better. The only note of sadness in our otherwise happy life was that dear Wallace, one of the stars of Feta , passed away at the age of 16 in after we moved back to Britain. We were devastated, as Wallace had been through all our adventures with us and had been a talisman, as well as a welcome distraction at times. While we sat in the car eating chicken sandwiches for lunch, we mulled over how we could blag our way inside with the dog. Jim finally came up with a daring strategy. Jim thought for a minute. Wallace always had a thing about chicken because Brigit, his kind but eccentric breeder in Edinburgh, fed all her puppies with roast chicken, which was a disaster for feeding programmes later. It explained why chicken was the only food that the fussy Wallace liked unequivocally. I turned and looked at Wallace on the back seat. He was panting. I expressed serious doubts about the plan but Jim was more optimistic. Remember the time we carried him in it when we were hill walking in Scotland and he hurt his paw and was limping? He was good and quiet then. Feed us two-month-old mizithra cheese and village bread. And in a cold January in Greece, you can get like that, wanting a laugh, any laugh. Get all your stuff. We got out of the car and locked it. Jim put on the rucksack with Wallace in it and I dropped in the chicken sandwich, torn into several pieces, which was the messiest part of the plan, and zipped up the bag, leaving the air hole. The minute the sandwich hit the bottom, Wallace was down there like a deep-sea diver and the bag was wriggling like mad, then all went quiet. I could almost hear his lip-smacking enjoyment over the chicken. We walked quickly through the main gate, Jim stood to one side while I went to the small cabin window. I asked her what time the site closed. She looked at him with narrowed eyes. I glanced at the rucksack and thought I saw the edge of it was wriggling. Maybe she saw it as well. Jim sensed the hitch, aware that Wallace was growing restless, eager for another chicken soother, so he started walking down the dirt track that led between broken columns and the outlines of ancient buildings. I turned and legged it down the track, smiling to myself. When I caught up with Jim I could hear Wallace starting to whine and the zip was coming further apart at the top as he tried to get his snout into the cool air. Jim walked faster. The site sloped down to an old amphitheatre and from there it was a short walk to a cluster of olive trees. Once there we were safe, out of sight of the entrance cabin. Find out how the smuggling strategy panned out finally, one of many amusing adventures in Things Can Only Get Feta. I hope enjoy it. The book is available as an ebook and paperback on all Amazon sites. The ebook and paperback are available on all Amazon sites. It helps a book become more visible and is always appreciated by the author. Wake Me Up For The Elephants : Comic tales of a restless traveller, is a collection of eight adventure stories with the same humour and flavour of my best-selling Greek memoirs but with a bigger canvas this time. And one story will include dear Wallace, our Jack Russell terrier, not long after he was born. I travelled with groups of other Australian writers — usually outspoken, eccentric, game for anything — with hilarious outcomes. The trip was high on adventure, with several safaris at wildlife parks, including the inimitable Masai Mara. There were stays in historic hotels like the famous Treetops, where Princess Elizabeth in the s became Queen on the sudden death of her father George VI. Read my amusing extract of this scenario, below. However, this collection of stories is not all fun and frolics. In one of the stories from Scotland Hysterics in the Heather , I take my mother, Mary, on a sentimental journey back to the wilder parts of our homeland, including the remote Outer Hebrides islands and while it has amusing shades of Thelma and Louise with electric bagpipes! I grapple with the notion of where a restless traveller really belongs when the wandering, and the laughter, stops. In another story, I spend an unforgettable day with one of the last great and very entertaining , lairds of Scotland, Ninian Brodie, at his ancestral home in Morayshire. Extract from the chapter, Going Troppo in the South Pacific :. We were embarrassed at first, so the chief got up and elbowed some of the young men and women to partner us on the dance floor, which they did timidly, like teenagers at a school dance. It was hot and airless in the hall and the kava had really kicked in now in weird ways. My partner was young and eager and the frantic swish of his grass skirt at least provided something of a cooling breeze. But in no other way was this enjoyable. Other villagers, at loose ends, piled into the back of the hall to watch and I realised finally that this crazy performance in a sleepy village, upriver, so far from the modern delights of Fijian towns, was probably fashioned for their entertainment entirely, rather than ours, but in a benign way, surely, not an Evelyn Waugh, hell-in-the jungle kind of way. It was bizarre. And we all looked the same, dancing with arms possessed, but dragging our feet. Through the madness I could see the chief was still smiling, totally oblivious to the state we were in. When will this dance torture end? I thought. But I kept going, coaxing my legs about the room, dripping flop sweat, and feeling queasy in the stomach. Corrine and Joe began to slow dance, which in this frenetic set-up seemed radical. Do let me know how you like the book and have fun reading it. And if you do, please consider putting a review on Amazon sites. IN church, in the middle of a solemn liturgy, a mobile phone rings from inside a black Karl Lagerfeld bag parked on its own chair in front of me. On and on it goes, a modern ringtone that clashes with the austere chanting and the Byzantine saints looking down, weary-eyed, from the surrounding frescos. Peace at last. If I could have picked the right tone for the Lagerfeld woman it would have been Never On Sunday , popularised in the Greek film of the same name. Strangely though, British people are catching up and ditching rules, especially in politics: environmental laws, labour laws and parliamentary procedure, but in a much less charming way. It was a typical village, slightly ramshackle round the edges with olive groves, dogs chained in fields, and as usual in rural villages, there were old, rundown buildings too. Sad to see a few old tavernas and kafeneia now closed, though the newer kafeneio Bakaliko by the main square was rather pleasant, recently opened by a local woman offering a shiny version of the trad kafeneia with their typical scuffed rush-bottom chairs and battered metal tables. It was a nice place to sit on a Sunday near the church of the Panayia Virgin Mary and watch people passing by, and meet a few of our neighbours. The original dwelling was flattened during the earthquake that ruined much of the island. The new house has a traditional feel with stone walls and a smattering of rural mementos. This is real Greece with all its joys and imperfections. More of that later. To see the village house, Villa Gioia, in Katastari , visit www. Zakynthos is a small compact island and its beauty spots are already well known and written about, mainly the Shipwreck Cove with its spectacular cliffs and the rusting, stranded ship. For a different side to Zakynthos, however, we took the road west across the island to the hillside villages of Maries, with its typical Greek square and a slew of attractive old buildings with a shabby chic aura, like the one below. The village of Exo Hora, further south, was also traditional in parts, with a lovely view to the sea. And if derelict old village buildings attract you, there was a small settlement on the west of this village with an abandoned mill and some crumbling stone houses, as you see in many hillside villages in Greece. It was curious. The town of Zakynthos, in the south-east, with a coastal setting and a thriving harbour, turned out to be the biggest draw for us, even though in September it was still hoaching with tourists and it was difficult to find a parking space. However, even that turned out to be a bonus. We had to park in a back street at the edge of the city and it meant walking quite a way through the backstreets, which were fascinating and teeming with urban life, to get to the centre. As the famous church of Ayios Dionysios the patron saint of the island was also on our route, we called in for a visit. If you want to know how church relics have brought me out in panic attacks in Greece, you might like to read my chapter on the subject in my fourth memoir A Donkey On the Catwalk. The town is full of treasures like the Byzantine Museum on Solomos Square that houses a fabulous collection of frescos, icons and whole altar panels taken out of the many churches, some dating from the early 16 th century, that were tragically destroyed during the devastating earthquake of The private garden site is now a memorial to the two brave men who helped to save local Jews during , when Nazi invaders controlled the island. On an island where Jews had lived for centuries and had always been accepted, the two men tacitly refused to hand them over to the Germans and boldly put their own names on the list instead, telling the commander that all the Jews had left the island already, which many later did, or were hidden by the islanders. The entire Jewish population was thereby saved. For more information visit www. Stathmos means bus station, which is what the old building was until recently. It still has a slight utilitarian feel about it, with its wide metal awning at the front and dark green shutters, but the caged canaries were a lively addition and the waiters were chirpy as well. While we waited for our meal to arrive, I kept anticipating a city bus pulling up out front for a take-away though it never happened of course. The Stathmos is an old-style place, reminiscent of tavernas you might have encountered decades ago with similar dishes and a no-nonsense approach. We had giant stuffed peppers and a moussaka, all very tasty and filling. The view down to the city and harbour is one of the most photographed in Greece and is stunning see top photo. Some of Zakynthos is criticised for being overdeveloped and the south coast, with the infamous clubby Laganas, comes into that category and while popular Alykes on the east coast seemed touristy as well with its fair share of more commercial restaurants, and bars with names like Piccadilly Bar etc, it has one big redeeming feature: the beach. There are plenty of tavernas in Alykes, though nothing stood out for us. The place we found the most peaceful and authentic was a family-run restaurant on a hill above the popular tiny beach north of Katastari, called Xigia, which has sulphur springs bubbling up into the water, reported to be therapeutic. The restaurant on the hill above is called the Nireas, run by a charming family with good wholesome Greek dishes and an awesome view right down the coast and across to the nearby island of Kefalonia. For me, Greece is all about the people and Zakynthos proved to be a friendly place. In a couple of weeks we had got to know some of the villagers in Katastari well enough to be sorry we had no time to find out more, like the brothers who run the supermarket next to the church, one of whom had spent a few years in Chicago but had always dreamt of coming back to his birth village to live in the house his family have owned for generations. She makes a pretty good spanakopita spinach and feta pie as well. The nearby owner had them no doubt to protect her chickens etc and the first few nights they seemed to bark a lot. One night I had a cough and every time I started up, one dog in particular barked. It went on a while. Cough, bark, cough, bark, as if we were having some odd nocturnal conversation over our respective yards. In the following days, the dogs barked less. It suddenly occurred to me that each new set of foreigners who moved in probably made the animals edgy, understandably, because of the way noise travels in rural Greece. But once they got used to you, they gave up. Available in ebook and paperback on all international sites. You can find them also on her Amazon page. You can also follow her on FB www. And Twitter: www. Thanks for dropping by. All comments are gratefully received. I am currently in the process of sorting the comments function. If you want to get in touch otherwise you can via the contact icon on the home page of the website or via social media. Like many of you, I suspect, the last 12 months has felt like being thrown a curved ball — or more of a demolition ball really. The pandemic experience has been troubling and strange, and downright frightening at times, locked in our domestic prisons, experiencing strictures none of us have ever come across before. I have heard my family talk about living through wartime Britain, and although the pandemic is not quite that bad, I could understand for the first time how terrifying and restricted their lives must have been. Despite having plenty of time to write regular pieces, such as blog posts, I failed at the beginning of the lockdown last March to gather up the motivation when other issues seemed much more important. And the future looked uncertain. If anything good can possibly come of this pandemic, it must surely be to appreciate the simple, true things of life more. Beautiful Kynance Cove in Cornwall, on the far edge of care. Many of us have gone back to basics, spending more time being quiet, watching instead of talking, thinking instead of acting, appreciating nature, cherishing health and love above other things. And I do hope you have all survived the pandemic without too much loss or sadness. For my part, I know that what made the past year easier to bear was the fact I now live in Cornwall, near the sea, a beautiful part of the world and a place where you can really feel the power of nature. With its wonderful coves and big skies, it has felt like the best possible place to be in lockdown. And I have not been completely idle these past 12 months. After a bumpy start, I did start another book last summer and once it picked up speed, I found it was a superb way to shut out the world and its cares a while. Yours, and no-one else need see your efforts, or interfere, or take it away from you for that period of time. There is nothing else like quite like it! So, finally the book has just been published, on May 5. However, the theme is still Greece and most of the tales are set in the wild Mani region of the Peloponnese again, with a return of some of the characters you have loved, like Foteini the inimitable goat farmer with her eccentric take on life. And Wallace, our Jack Russell companion, is still creating mayhem. How could he not? As well as tales from the Peloponnese, there are stories from other Greek locations my husband Jim and I have visited, including Pelion and the islands of Santorini and Corfu. This book also offers tales from some of my own earlier trips to Greece, which I have not published before, including a year in Athens during a dangerous time of political upheaval, and a sabbatical in Crete, with a touch of romance in an idyllic setting. Marjory outside the Ayia Playia taverna in Falanthi, near Koroni. But there are other stories too that are thought-provoking and chip away a bit more at the Greek psyche and lifestyle. I hope you enjoy this book and if you do, please let me know. I always love to hear from readers. And do post a review of the book on Amazon if you care to. She has also written two novels set in southern Greece. You can find them on her Amazon page. Or visit the Books page on her website www. And as one year stretched to four, it changed our lives completely. We left with Britain during a harsh recession and our village in central Scotland, near Stirling, during a blast of Arctic weather. We had the added uncertainty of leaving regular employment in Scottish journalism to cast ourselves adrift with modest savings, but with the hope of future freelancing. But Greece, despite its massive bailout from the EU and ensuing austerity measures, still seemed like a safer option, to our way of thinking anyway. Even now, I recall vividly the excitement of planning the trip which was no small undertaking. Months beforehand we had a bullet list of things to do filling four A4 pages: renting out our Scottish apartment and putting personal items in storage; all the endless bureaucracy involved in cutting loose from Britain; having to limit our travel luggage to what would fit in a small Ford Fiesta. Amazingly, everything in the picture above was shoehorned in finally on a grey dreich Scottish morning, threatening rain. And because we were taking our much loved terrier with us, there was a long list of necessities for him as well: microchip, pet passport, vaccinations. And hotels had to be booked along the way that were pet friendly, no easy task back then. While Wallace had a fabulous personality and was hugely entertaining, he did have the crazy Jack Russell gene: boisterous and often unpredictable. So it ramped up the uncertainty as well. We drove south to Dover and took the car ferry to Calais and then made our way through France, Switzerland and Italy, to Ancona, for the crossing to Patras in Greece with a pet-friendly cabin. It was a great trip and Wallace was fine most of the time, apart from barking at every motorway toll booth attendant and having one or two angsty moments in hotels, the most memorable being in Italy. While we waited at the front desk in a large hotel in central Italy, Wallace took a dislike to two rowdy teenagers skittering about the foyer and launched into his characteristic slightly hysterical bark. The manager checking us in had a massive strop, which set Wallace off again. We were forbidden from leaving him in the room alone while we went out to dinner, so we had to take him with us. Life seemed sweet in the southern mainland least. It was a warm April, people seemed happy, tavernas and cafes had brisk trade. But that was about to swing over as progressed, with unimaginable changes and hardships on the cards for Greek people. We had decided to live in the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese, a wild and authentic region. We rented a small stone house in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, just south of the city of Kalamata. In our four years in Greece, we managed to cram a great deal into our lives out of sheer delight at being able to have a mid-life adventure at all, in those crisis-ridden days. We travelled regularly around the three peninsulas of this region and to the north Peloponnese and saw most of famed sites like Olympia, Mystras, Arcadian villages, and the island of Kythera. Occasionally there was some difficulty, travelling with a dog, in a country that regarded them more as working animals, like the day we had to smuggle Wallace into the Ancient Messene archaeological site because dogs were banned. Because of Wallace, there were mishaps galore mostly comical. Yet conversely, some of the decisions we made just to accommodate Wallace on our trip, ironically turned out to be wise decisions which I describe in my memoirs. We had a huge challenge on the gorgeous World Heritage Byzantine rock island of Monemvasia, on the east of the Peloponnese, when Wallace got the jitters in the historic 12 th century house we rented for a few days. Situated in the heart of the fortified settlement, where the owner told us some devilish times had been suffered by the householders during an Ottoman-Turkish siege, Wallace seemed to picked up grisly vibes. It was all brought to a head in a storm, when he howled like a banshee and then accidentally wrecked a piece of ancestral furnishing. In all, throughout our odyssey, we made a point of not sinking into the familiarity of expat communities, entertaining though they were, but sought out a more authentic Greek life. We went out of our way to meet neighbouring rural Greeks for which I had to brush up fast on my rusty Greek language skills. We went to festivals, endless church services, at least one funeral but no weddings, olive harvests, coffee mornings in hornet-infested, ramshackle farmyards, and dubious cheese tasting events. This turned out to be another good decision. It is the friendships and the kindness of Greek people even in dire circumstances that will stay in my memory forever; people like Foteini the goat farmer, who turned out to be an unlikely literary muse for me and who appears in all three memoirs. A tough Maniot farmer and a charming but eccentric woman, she became a friend and provided me with many hilarious encounters that seemed skewed from other eras of old Greece. I well remember us sitting in her dilapidated village house one winter in front of a roaring fire while wind whistled through the cracks in her kitchen walls. We drank Coca-Cola and roasted chunks of goat cheese which we hated, sadly, but pretended otherwise on skewers over the flames. Other times we also observed and smiled over her many comical rituals: peeling bananas at a sink and then washing the fruit, or indulging in riskier pursuits like almost blowing up her farming shed while making Greek coffee. But these were also challenging years. While Jim and I were freelancing for overseas publications and were able to live frugally without being affected directly by the crisis, we had involved ourselves in Greek communities and witnessed the impact of the crisis on locals. This was particularly so in , when social unrest and poverty began to climb and Greeks became uncharacteristically depressed and nervous. It was the first time we questioned whether we had any right to continue our Greek odyssey. I have visited Greece during other difficult times in its history and these crisis years were no less frightening, especially with the rise of a particular extreme and violent right-wing party that had gained seats in the Greek parliament. I even began to hear Greeks anticipate the sight of tanks rumbling down the streets again, as they had during the infamous military dictatorship of the s and 70s. Fortunately it never came to that. It is never forgotten, is always a source of lively discussion between Jim and me and has inspired us during happy and sad times, including August , when dear Wallace passed away in England, aged 16 years. And especially in these worrying times in lockdown, due to the Corona virus, Jim and I find ourselves thinking more and more of those Greek years, grateful we were able to have an amazing, long adventure that neither of us had anticipated in that freezing winter when we left Scotland. That applies more now than ever before as our world turns upside down with health worries. It all helps to raise the profile of a book. And is always welcome. Thank you. The new novel features the same main characters Bronte, Angus, Leonidas, Myrto and a few exciting new ones, with some gripping contemporary storylines. One of these reflects the social upheaval of the economic crisis in with a rise in extreme far-right political parties based on my own observations of living in Greece during this tumultuous period. The book is laced with plenty of suspense, but also unforgettable romance and humour. It can be read equally as a standalone, or as a sequel. In this page-turning drama, expat Bronte McKnight is in the early days of her love affair with charismatic doctor Leonidas Papachristou. But as Bronte tries to live and love like a Greek, the economic crisis spawns an unlikely, and dangerous, predator in the village. The challenges Bronte faces will bring high drama as well as great humour as she tries to find a foothold in her Greek paradise. But can she succeed? This book confirms Marjory McGinn as an author of popular fiction to be reckoned with. This second novel, like the first, is set mainly in the hillside village of Marathousa, with the same breathtaking scenery, but it also takes the readers to untouched and unforgettable places deeper in the Mani peninsula as dramatic as the storyline, including the ghostly, deserted village of Vathia, where tough, warring Maniot clans built high fortified towers as they fought for dominance; the dramatic Porto Kayio cove; and the fabled cave of Hades portal to the Underworld near Cape Tainaron, at the southern-most tip of mainland Greece. One of the newest characters in the book is the lovable dog, Zeffy, whom Bronte rescues from his homeless existence in the village and who will make you laugh and cry with some of his capers. He was serving in the region with the Royal Army Service Corps during this time and disappeared in the battle. And it is this that will bring charismatic Dr Leonidas Papachristou into her life. I had heard something about this infamous Battle of Kalamata while we were living for four years in Greece and the brave rear-guard action of the allies, who retreated to southern Greece after the Germans invaded in How Greek Is Your Love? The paperback will be available very soon as well. THIS Saturday is the feast day of Ayios Dimitrios Saint Dimitrios , pictured above in his usual guise, a jaunty character in a green cape, riding a sorrel-coloured horse. There will be a service early at churches named after the saint and then usually a yiorti, a celebration, nearby, especially in rural areas. They are one of the best ways for foreigners to get a unique insight into Greek life with some of its pomp but mostly its spontaneity and eccentricity. Tables will be spread out under the olive trees, as it was in the hillside village of Megali Mantineia, where we spent our first year in the southern Peloponnese. Locally sourced goat or lamb is often roasted in the village fournos woodfired oven , or a spit-roast barbecue set up, or food brought from local tavernas. Villagers, and two local priests, enjoying a yiorti celebration in the southern Peloponnese in front of a mad, smoking fournos. Ayios Dimitrios was a martyr saint who, in the 4 th century AD, was imprisoned and tortured for helping the citizens of Thessaloniki in northern Greece to rise up against the pagan teachings of the Romans. The feast day of Ayios Dimitrios has an added charm because if the weather has turned especially warm in the last two weeks of October, the Greeks call this The Little Summer of Saint Dimitrios. Traditionally, October us the time for farmers to bring their flocks down from the hills to lower pastures for winter grazing, so the Little Summer is always a welcome occurrence. The Saint in the title has a few different meanings in the narrative but the main allusion is to Saint Dimitrios because his feast day celebration in a Taygetos mountain village is instrumental in the plot, bringing an intriguing World War II mystery to its nail-biting conclusion. These names stuck the whole time we were in Greece and seem to fire up again every time we return. The feast day celebrations were always convivial and Greeks were generous in embracing outsiders in what is essentially a very traditional Greek day. We had good company, great local cuisine and plenty of wine and gossip. More importantly, as foreigners, we learnt a lot from these celebrations. The tiny chapel of Ayios Yiorgos above in the hills behind the village of Megali Mantineia with its flower decked icon. A centuries-old fresco of St George in a Mani monastery below. St George was another great martyr saint and a tribune living in the first century AD who is always depicted on his white horse, spearing a dragon-like interloper. You can just see the beast above at the bottom of the icon where age and water damage have diluted the colours. It was at this celebration in at a small chapel in the hills above Megali Mantineia that we met a businessman called Tassos over lunch who was curious about our odyssey in rural Greece in the midst of the economic crisis. Greece has lovely unspoilt coves like these at Otylo in the Mani but it has many more hidden assets. It was hard to convince him that it was Greece we wanted for this mid-life odyssey and nowhere else. It was a very good question. What indeed? And the question remained with me throughout my years in Greece, informing my own search for meaning and fulfilment in this country as well as informing my writing. For me, there were many things I sought and found, and loved, about Greece, as you will discover if you read Homer , and the other memoirs of course. For the feast day of St George, tables spread under the olive trees for villagers, and the priest left , of Megali Mantineia. It could be that being able to access these unique celebrations on feast days, like the one for Saint Dimitrios, is part of it, an ability to enjoy simple pleasures in beautiful surroundings, embraced by warm, inclusive communities. In our four years in southern Greece, in the Mani and later in the nearby Messinian peninsula, we went to many of these feast days. They were all different in location and intensity, and we enjoyed every one of them. It is here that you gain insight into Greek traditions and social life, and rituals that are gloriously diverting and rooted in the Byzantine world. These are rituals that have changed little in the past years. And Greek people, I promise you, will admire your interest and curiosity. Only this one is in confinement in the BM, and has been since Lord Elgin sold his collection of looted antiquities to the museum in Statue of the lone Caryatid in the British Museum in London. The famous five Caryatid statues before removal to the New Acropolis Museum. While I was admiring the lady from afar, I could hear a young Greek couple chattering beside me about the off-limits statue. One was urging the other to take a picture. In the end the woman ducked under the tape and took a quick snap from the door, poring over it sheepishly on the back of her digital camera. Then the pair hurried away. The British Museum built ironically in the image of the Parthenon in Athens. The British Museum, its design ironically imitating the Parthenon with columns and an ornamental pediment at the front, continues to ignore countless requests to have the collection of sculptures returned to Athens and the debate about it rages on and on. The Parthenon today without its ornamental sculptures. Carved metope of a centaur and lapith wrestling, in the BM. The sculptures were entrusted to the revered artist Pheidias. They included the life-sized figures on the pediments gable ends of the building depicting the Olympian gods and goddesses and their struggles. The other sculptures are carved metopes, which sat above the columns and the frieze from the inner colonnade of the Parthenon. The BM holds parts ft of the frieze depicting the important Panathenaia procession with horses and riders, which took place in the city every four years. Even Lord Byron decried the plundering of the Parthenon and its artefacts. Processional horsemen from the north frieze of the Parthenon in the BM. When Elgin was given the go-ahead to remove the sculptures, in the process many were dropped and smashed. And when the BM bought them they were overzealously cleaned with bleach and other harsh substances that would have done them no favours. In the end Lord Elgin took as much as he could, amounting to half the sculptures and other items, around tonnes. He also took a large number of objects from ancient Athenian burial sites, including steles, grave markers, and the funerary urns of prestigious Athenians. Why did he want it all? Not for the money initially, although he had to sell much of the collection to the BM in because he came back to Britain broke and in dire health. But the main reason for taking the artefacts was a piece of aristocratic folly and hubris. He wanted them to decorate the ancestral pile he was building in Fife, Scotland to share with his wealthy Scottish heiress wife, Mary Nisbet. Broomhall House in Scotland is still home to the Elgin family. Broomhall House today, in its vast grounds in Fife, is a grand pile occupied by the 11th Earl of Elgin, Andrew Bruce, now in his 90s. Not everything was bought by the BM and what remained — the inferior or very damaged pieces, and smaller items from other locations, were taken to Broomhall House and have apparently remained there. The house is off-limits to the public and I was barred from speaking to any of the family. It was a maid, over the phone, who finally told me that the Elgin family never discuss the marbles. No surprise there! One of the galleries for the Elgin collection, BM. To be fair, the sculptures are prized by the BM and adequately displayed in several large airy galleries, but unimaginably so. There were plenty of visitors the day I went, mostly Japanese, it seemed. For them, the collection will have been fascinating, but for anyone who has seen the other half of the original collection in the fabulous New Acropolis Museum in Athens, this forlorn exhibition cannot compare in any way with what the Greeks have done. For this it has a state of the art, purpose-built top gallery to restore and display all the surviving sculptures in the correct order, as they would have appeared on the Parthenon in the 5th century BC. The museum is built on the southern slope of the Acropolis and the Parthenon is within view through massive glass windows, giving the collection its true context. The original chariot horse in the BM for which a copy has been made above to sit on one of the Parthenon pediments. The most significant argument for the sculptures being returned and housed in the Athens museum is that this vast sequence of sculptures and in particular the carved metopes and the frieze have a narrative. They tell particular mythological stories of Greek gods, their triumphs and struggles, or they depict, as in the frieze, a grand procession including scores of men and riders, which is unique to Athens. To see these items in bits and pieces in the BM makes no sense at all. The narrative is splintered, the meaning gone. To keep the two halves of the sculptural narrative separate is cultural vandalism that benefits no-one, especially the visitors. In Athens they are part of a museum that focuses upon the ancient history of the city and Acropolis. The British Museum sees them as part of a world museum where they can be connected with other civilisations such as Egypt, Assyria and Persia. It would now be magnanimous if the BM gave the sculptures back to Greece so that we can all finally see them in their own historic context. Actress and politician Melina Mercouri at the Parthenon. They constitute our historical and religious heritage. Look after them well, because the day will come when the Greeks will ask for them back. To my mind the most poignant symbol of this cultural intransigence is the lonely Caryatid statue I saw in that corner of the British Museum. For information about the Parthenon Sculptures and some of the debate about them, click on the very informative The Acropolis of Athens site run by Greek research scientist Dr Nikolaos Chatziandreou. He also has some interesting theories on how the Scots in particular could help in the drive to get the sculptures returned to Athens. To read my travel memoirs of life in Greece during the economic crisis visit www. I thoroughly enjoyed it. For more information about all the books please visit the books page on our website www. Like this: Like Loading Please share this post. Lush hillsides on the west coast of the Beara peninsula top and a high, narrow road on the Wild Atlantic Way. Colourful houses of Allihies on the Beara peninsula top. A bit of Dublin romance with rain clouds over the timeless Liffey River. The other, louder side of modern Dublin life with one of its famous pubs, The Temple Bar. A ceilidh band at the Sin E pub in Cork and below, a thoughtful musician strumming over a pint of Guinness. Wallace, above, and again with Jim and Marjory in Koroni. Marjory with the unforgettable Foteini. The village of Megali Mantineia, where the author spent the first year of her Greek odyssey. Jim back row, right with the wonderful villagers and two of its priests at a celebration in Megali Mantineia. Some of the press coverage for the book in Foteini on her donkey Riko, taken at her farm compound in Megali Mantineia. Wallace, up to his usual mischief on the first week of our Greek odyssey in The main stadium at Ancient Messene, which was no match for the shenanigans of Jim, Marjory and Wallace. Elephants strolling the grasslands of Kenya. Jim and Marjory riding in Connemara, led by a lobster fisherman! The harbour of Loggos, Paxos island, Greece. A comical sign on Qamea island in tropical Fiji. The settlement of Milovaig in the west of the Isle of Skye, where boats float in fields and waterfalls spin backwards. Zakynthos Town and harbour viewed from the upper district of Bochali. Marjory at the village kafeneio in Katastari. The Bakaliko kafeneio. Iconic Greek image in eastern Zakynthos with Kefalonia in the distance. A vibrant village house in Maries. Ruins of an old house and mill in the village of Exo Hora. The meditating papas at Ayios Dionysios. Ayios Giorgos from a Byzantine church destroyed in One of the best beaches in north Alykes. Busy Xigia beach with its sulphur springs. Stay safe. Marjory, Jim and Wallace in Scotland weeks before they left on their Greek odyssey. Piles of luggage, and Wallace the dog, ready to be shoehorned into the Ford car to be driven to Greece. Wallace taking his first look at Calais from our pet-friendly ferry cabin. Marjory and Wallace in the car, outside a hotel in Battenheim, near the Swiss border. A view of Kalamata city on the Messenian Gulf from olive groves near the village of Megali Mantineia. The small stone house where we stayed for the first year with our Greek car out front. Jim and Wallace in the first few weeks of the Greek odyssey touring around the Mani peninsula. The wonderful Byzantine church of Ayia Sophia at the top of the fortified rock fortress that is Monemvasia, a World Heritage site. Lovable and unpredictable Wallace was always up for a bit of fun and always a perfect photographic model. Occasionally a dab hand at book editing as well! Taken in Koroni, A fortified stone tower of the Deep Mani Iconic Vathia with its mostly deserted stone towers one the strongholds of warring clans in the Mani, but now a dramatic ghost village This second novel, like the first, is set mainly in the hillside village of Marathousa, with the same breathtaking scenery, but it also takes the readers to untouched and unforgettable places deeper in the Mani peninsula as dramatic as the storyline, including the ghostly, deserted village of Vathia, where tough, warring Maniot clans built high fortified towers as they fought for dominance; the dramatic Porto Kayio cove; and the fabled cave of Hades portal to the Underworld near Cape Tainaron, at the southern-most tip of mainland Greece. The ancient Temple of Poseidon at Cape Tainaron, close to the mythic Cave of Hades, once believed to be the doorway to the Underworld Porto Kayio, one of the remote coves of the Deep Mani region One of the newest characters in the book is the lovable dog, Zeffy, whom Bronte rescues from his homeless existence in the village and who will make you laugh and cry with some of his capers. Compelling new novel set in southern Greece.

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Creative Commons Zero. This folio from Walters manuscript W. In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection. Creative Commons License. Download Image Zoom. Piri Reis Turkish, Author. Share social-item social-item social-item. Credit Line Acquired by Henry Walters. Accession Number. Do you have additional information? Notify the curator. Parent Object. Book on Navigation Piri Reis Turkish, Tooltip description to define this term for visitors to the website.

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