British Council and Anglo-Greek Literary Interactions, 1945-1955

David Ricks, Peter Mackridge

"In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and with British political influence over Greece soon to be ceded to the United States, there was nonetheless a degree of cultural interaction between Greek and British literati. Sponsored or assisted by the British Council, this interaction was notable for its diversity and quality alike. Indeed, the British Council in Greece made a more significant contribution to local culture in that period than at any other time, and perhaps in any other country. Many of the participants among them Patrick Leigh Fermor, Steven Runciman, and Louis MacNeice are well known, while others deserve to be better known than they are today. But what has been less fully discussed, and what the volume sets out to do, is to explore the two-way relations between Greek and British literary production in which the British Council played a particularly...