I have been reading Robert Byron's lovely, weird,
The Byzantine Achievement (1929). I am drawn to the way the English mind admires the Hellenic as part of its being drawn to the Levantine. This Hellenophilia is a question of seeing Greece as something more, and more continuous, than merely having in its heyday been the birthplace of the Western mind. Besides, I like the way creative people like
John Craxton (and the Durrell's of course) and others were so keen on Greece.
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