The first of these, of course, was the Greek revolutionary period (1821-1832), what English historiography at least calls the Greek War of Independence. To evoke something of this British-Greek sensibility I don’t need to do much more now than gently mention the name of Byron, dead at Mesolongi in 1824; but the fact is we are now approaching the most critical years in the long bicentenary decade of the revolution, when, 200 years ago, what Britain thought about and did for the Greek people really mattered, really made a difference. Over the next year or so, I shall write something about PM George Canning, about the Treaty of London (1827) and its protocols, about Admiral Codrington and Navarino, about Wellington himself. The story, of course, of these moments is no more simple than its aftermath proved to be, but it brought the two peoples into each other’s sights and fields of influence. And we have rarely been far apart since then.

The second period is the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and their aftermath. The wars were formally ended through the international London Peace Conference, which culminated in the Treaty of London (1913). This not only settled, for half a generation, the borders in the Balkans and the Aegean, but also created new institutions bringing Greece and Britain together. This was the period that gave us the Anglo-Hellenic League, founded in 1913 both to raise money for the settlement of refugees displaced by the wars and to align the interests of the Liberal governments of Britain and Greece. The League still exists today and I had the great pleasure of leading it for 6½ years. But those who were instrumental in founding the League also had important academic aspirations. The Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature was established at King’s College London in 1918 to broaden English education about Greece from the classical into the mediaeval and modern worlds (a parallel move was underway in Oxford). A representative survey of the Anglo-Hellenic thinking of these years is set out in Dowling & Fletcher’s captivating Hellenism in England: A Short History of the Greek People in this Country from the Earliest Times to the Present Day [London: Faith Press 1915]. This book is hard to find outside libraries but gives a really good feel for the sensibilities and ideas of the day.

The third period is the Second World War, at least its opening phases (1939-41). After the collapse of most of western Europe in the face of the Nazi onslaught in 1939-40, Greece and the British Empire famously stood alone. The months of subsequent defiance in Greece were not long but they created legends, friendships and tales of heroism and of defeat that have endured; resistance followed. In England, of course, Philhellenism gained a new cause, a new lustre. The warrior-writers of that period—Monty Woodhouse, Paddy Leigh Fermor, Xan Fielding, Nicholas Hammond and so on—directed the way in which my parents’ generation and my own have viewed Greece, the Greek people and the relations between us. It is impossible, particularly when walking in the mountains of Crete or Epirus, not to feel that one is walking in their footsteps, breathing the Greek air and enjoying Greek company and culture as they once did. I am particularly fond of two books that were published in this period to explain to the British people something of the significance of the alliance with Greece and the Greeks. In July 1941, shortly after the fall of Crete, Dilys Powell, wife of Humfry Payne, former director of the British School at Athens (BSA), published Remember Greece [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1941]: an account of the Greek people that succeeds in being historical, elegiac and optimistic—its last chapter is called ‘The Story of Free Men’. In 1943, a few months before his death in a wartime accident, Stanley Casson, former assistant director of the BSA, published Greece and Britain [London: Collins, 1943]: a perfect expression of Anglo-Hellenism, it examines links between the two peoples from the Bronze Age to 1918. Both these books succeed in moving beyond mere antiquarian understandings of ancient Greece; both writers knew and liked Greeks in the here and now.

Along the way, of course, there have been many sources of tension and disagreement and I will look at some of these too in this Substack: the Parthenon Sculptures, the Dilessi Murders, the Don Pacifico affair, the history of loans and bankruptcies, the Treaty of Sèvres, the Greek Civil War, Cyprus, the November 17 terrorists. Brexit too has had a challenging impact, though it seems to me—as an outsider since 2017 to the diplomacy involved—that the Greeks have worked harder than most of the EU-27 not to allow the UK to slip into resentful and unhelpful isolation. That is a good sign of the strength of an enduring and valuable bilateral relationship and I for one am grateful.

The story of British-Greek relations isn’t, of course, simply about politicians, diplomats and military men (though it is partly about them), it is also substantially about tourists (grand and ordinary), merchants, financiers and bankers, writers and intellectuals, artists, people of faith. I don’t think that there is any aspect of our relations which really fails to interest me. This is one reason why for me to be ambassador in Greece was like being a big-hearted and open-minded child in a sweetshop or an adventure park—so much to see, to taste, to think, to hold, to visit, to experience, to enjoy. Above all, it was a privileged and wonderful dialogue with a wonderful people, a dialogue which I hope these pages will, in a modest way, continue.

********

We had Mediterranean weather in Yorkshire in the first half of this week, with noontime temperatures in the shade cruising above 30˚C—unheard of, here on the coast. I was astonished by how quickly the soil started to give off the sort of deep and delicious aromas I associate uniquely with the Greek summer. Herby plant aromas, like casseroles; the scent of blossom and pollen in the air. It made me start to think, as I always do at this time of year, about my summer travel plans in Greece.

Those thoughts accelerated as I found myself re-reading a poem written in 1955 by Yannis Ritsos to his friend, the Chilean poet and politician Pablo Neruda. It’s a long and, in some ways, ingenious poem, in which Ritsos translates fragments from some of Neruda’s most famous pieces and ‘Hellenizes’ them. At the heart of it is a warm and generous invitation. ‘Come to Greece’, says Ritsos, ‘and share our hospitality’. Who could seriously resist? Not me.

Come, Pablo.

We shall lie one night on the grass and smoke starlight.

On a beach on Samos waiting for us are two chairs, a small green table,

a carafe of ouzo, octopus grilled over charcoal,

a song from the boats with the echo of Homeric oars,

large pages of brilliant white to take the imprint of our verses,

a red and gold Blessed Virgin of the grapes and the wheat,

olive-groves carrying baskets of ancient patience over their shoulders,

apricot-trees illuminating our papers with their flowers,

monasteries of silence behind the railings of the stars,

the dazzling sheen of the river where Hera used to bathe,

cypresses that point us to what we must say.

Everything is looking for us.

(translation: JK)

________

Έλα Πάμπλο.

Ξαπλωμένοι μια νύχτα στο χορτάρι θα καπνίσουμε τ’ αστρόφεγγο.

Σε μιαν ακρογιαλιά της Σάμου μάς περιμένει ένα πράσινο τραπεζάκι, δυο καρέκλες,

μια καράφα ούζο, χταπόδι ψημένο στα κάρβουνα,

ένα τραγούδι απ’ τις βάρκες με τον ήχο ομηρικών κουπιών,

μεγάλες σελίδες του ασβέστη να χαράξουμε τους στίχους μας,

η κόκκινη και χρυσή Παναγιά των σταφυλιών και των σταχιών

ελαιώνες κουβαλώντας στους ώμους τους πανέρια αρχαίας υπομονής,

βερυκοκκιές φέγγοντας με τ’ άνθη τους τα χαρτιά μας,

μοναστήρια σιωπής πίσω απ’ τα κάγκελα των άστρων,

η κραταιή λάμψη απ’ το ποτάμι όπου λουζόταν η Ήρα,

κυπαρίσσια που δείχνουν αυτό που πρέπει να πούμε.

Όλα μάς γυρεύουν.

(Γ.Ρίτσος, ‘Στον Πάμπλο Νερούντα’ (απόσπασμα) (1955))

********

One of the things that Greece and England both share is undervalued cuisines. I love English and Greek food and am always proud to show off and enjoy the best of both, to whoever is willing to enjoy my hospitality. And I love also the beverages we drink: English tea, Greek mountain tea; English and Greek beers; our great traditions of spirits; Greek wines and the rebirth of English wine. I shall be writing from time to time about these traditions.

One of my regular joys when I lived and served in Greece was visiting Greek producers—particularly those who exported produce to the UK—and Greek importers of English food and drink. Greek exports to the UK really began in the mid-1980s as a result of the creation of the Single Market. The arrival, in 1986, in British supermarkets of Greek sheep and cow yoghurt made by the great producer Fage was no accident. I will write at greater length in later pieces about some of the Greek exporters who sell Greek foodstuffs and wines to Britain.

Prior to Brexit at least, the importers of British foodstuffs were mostly based in western Greece, in Patra (the centre of the ancient market of currant exports from Greece to England) where British food and drink arrived by boat for distribution to the tourist markets in the Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands. Some part of the British tourist market is strongly attached to British beer and to the Great British Breakfast—even in the heady temperatures of the Greek summer. The import market partly serves their needs, but I like to think that some of our staples find a home on Greek shelves. We have a sophisticated food manufacturing sector about which we should feel more pride.

Let me close this piece by drawing your attention to a wonderful article about Greek rosé wine in last week’s Financial Times. Jancis Robinson is a longstanding fan of Greek wines and has done much to spread awareness in the UK of Greek varietals and of Greek excellence in wine production. I buy my Greek wines and spirits from various sources, but particularly from my old Oxford friends at Clark Foyster Wines (mentioned in Robinson’s article) and from Maltby & Greek, run by relatives of good Greek friends of mine. Their website links are embedded in case you too are missing, as I often am, the flavours of Greece and are tempted by what is now on offer. There will be more about Greek food, wines and spirits in subsequent Substacks!

John Kittmer

Ψυχοσάββατο, 30 May 2026

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Greece occupied my imagination from an early age. My dad, who travelled internationally as a salesman for a northern leather and chemicals business, had the habit of bringing back interesting souvenirs and telling us tales of what other countries were like. From dad’s travels in Greece my twin brother and I owned a set of amber worry-beads (kombolói) and a model of a Presidential Guardsman (an évzonas) standing at his protective hut, dressed in the short, pleated skirt (foustanélla) and pompomed-shoes (tsaroúchia me foúntes) of the tribe. Both seemed impressively and memorably exotic, unlike anything we knew in the Yorkshire of the 1970s.

Later at secondary school, where I was learning—and hugely enjoying learning—Latin, I recall standing in a classroom one day in front of a map of the classical world and properly learning and memorising something of the geography of Greece: the location of its cities and towns, the names of its seas and mountains, its major battle-sites and their dates, its physical proximity to Italy and Asia Minor. I knew that Greek was the language that somehow underpinned Latin and our own language, and was the real language of the Bible, which I wanted to read and study—as it was written. At the age of 11 or 12, I resolved that I would learn the language from the first moment I could, and I began to do so in 1981 when I had turned 14. I have been learning it, in its broad chronological and morphological sweep, ever since, and have tried systematically to master, or at least to gain some experience of, all its many forms from the Homeric to the classical, to the koine (the language of the New Testament) and the mediaeval, and on to the modern demotic. (I have yet to sit down and properly learn the earliest known form of the language, the Mycenaean linear B script; but perhaps there is still time for that.)

There is an inevitably reflexive character to learning Greek as an Englishman. Why am I doing this? is an often insistent question, requiring the act of learning to be continuously examined in terms of the situation of the learner himself. Of course, one might simply answer ‘Because I am enjoying learning it’, but things are rarely that simple. In my experience motivations for learning Greek—and all that accompanies learning it (as the gateway into a culture, a political economy, a history, a philosophy, a way of life)—may shift, evolve or even completely modulate over a lifetime’s grappling with it. These days, particularly since serving as a diplomat in Greece for four years (2013-2016), I tend to frame my interests bilaterally or even bilingually. What do the interactions of Greek and English, of Greek learners and English learners, of Greeks and Britons, of Greece and the UK tell us about ourselves, about each other? Such questions occupied me intensely as British ambassador to Greece and as chair of the Anglo-Hellenic League (from 2018-2024), and they occupy my thinking now as an independent scholar of Greek. Three of my current academic projects all have that reflexive character about them, and I’ll tell you more about them in the future, when I’m ready to share and rehearse ideas.

I intend to use this Substack to share some of my thinking and musing about the forms of interaction or correspondence (antapokriseis) between, at its broadest level of expression, the UK and Greece. If you’re interested in aspects of Greece, ancient or modern, or particularly in the links between the Greeks and the English, this Substack may well be something for you. But I will also try, from time to time, to reflect specifically on how Greeks look at the UK, which they tend (from long habit and simplicity of expression) to call simply England (Anglía). I am going to kick off my first posts by clearing some ground and providing a little bibliographical orientation. The next post will, therefore, take a broad look at writers and intellectuals who have already provided useful framing for the matters of interest to me here. I will give you some sources for broader reading and thinking.

In the meantime, if you’re impatient to see something of my likely approach, you can find examples of my earlier blogging here and here.

I hope that what I have to say here will be of interest to both Greeks and Brits with an interest in each other’s countries and cultures, and I hope that my readers will share their thoughts too on British-Greek interactions. This Substack will be written only in English, but from time to time, I will post a Greek version or translation on my old blog site for those who want to see me grappling with the language itself. I aim to post in English about once a month. If I get things right, this Substack could be both a useful signpost to more professional and specialist writing by experts in the field and a bridge to my own academic writing. Please consider joining me on this journey (no fee is payable!).

(The author at the annual commemoration of the Battle of Navarino, in October 2014. The battle—controversial in England at the time—is one of the founding moments of modern British-Greek relations. The annual commemoration in Pylos is a colourful, joyful affair. Alas! it is not always the custom in Greece (or even in the UK) to hoist the Union flag the right way up!)