British Ambassador David Mountolive enters the intrigues of the interwoven community of characters.

• Contents VII Foreword PETER BALDWIN XI Acknowledgements XIII Introduction JAMES GIFFORD
• 1 From the Elephant's Back PERSONAL POSIT IONS
• 27 A Letter from the Land of the Gods
• 29 Airgraph on Refugee Poets in Africa
• 37 No Clue to Living
• 47 This Magnetic, Bedevilled Island That Tugs at My Heart
• 53 Lamas in a French Forest IDEAS ABOUT LITERATURE
• 63 The Prince and Hamlet A Diagnosis
• 73 Hamlet, Prince of China
• 83 Prospero's Isle To Caliban
• 99 Ideas About Poems
• 101 Ideas About Poems II
• 103 The Heraldic Universe
• 107 Hellene and Philhellene
• 123 A Cavafy Find
• 129 A Real Heart Transplant into English
• 135 Introduction to Wordsworth
• 149 L'amour, Clef du Mystere? ETERNAL CONTEMPORARIES
• 183 Theatre Sense and Sensibility
• 187 The Happy Rock
• 199 Studies in Genius VI Groddeck
• 225 Constant Zarian Triple Exile
• 235 Enigma Variations
• 239 The Shades of Dylan Thomas
• 247 Bernard Spencer
• 257 The Other Eliot
• 271 Richard Aldington
• 277 On George Seferis
• 281 Poets Under the Bed SPIRIT OF PLACE : TRAVEL WRITING
• 287 Corfu Isle of Legend
• 297 The Island of the Rose
• 311 Can Dreams Live on When Dreamers Die?
• 317 Family Portrait
• 325 Letter in the Sofa
• 331 The Moonlight of Your Smile
• 337 The Poetic Obsession of Dublin
• 347 Borromean Isles
• 353 Alexandria Revisited
• 359 With Durrell in Egypt
• 379 Works Cited
• 391 Index.
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"...the proverb says that whoever sees the world from the back of an elephant learns the secrets of the jungle and becomes a seer. I had to be content to become a poet." -Lawrence Durrell Best known for his novels and travel writing, Lawrence Durrell defied easy classification within twentieth-century Modernism. His anti-authoritarian tendencies put him at odds with many contemporaries-aesthetically and politically. However, thanks to a compelling recontextualization by editor James Gifford, these thirty-eight previously unpublished and out-of-print essays and letters reveal that Durrell's maturation as an artist was rich, complex, and subtle. Durrell fans will treasure this selection of rare nonfiction, while scholars of Durrell, Modernist literature, anti-authoritarian artists, and the Personalist movement will also appreciate Gifford's fine editorial work. "Gifford's scholarly command of the archives shows-especially his working intimacy with the unpublished archived words of Durrell's editors, publishers, and collaborators. I have no doubt that this collection will serve as a starting point for any number of new critical ventures into the life and writing of Lawrence Durrell." -Charles Sligh, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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• Spirit of place
• Corfu
• Rhodes
• Cyprus
• Sicily
• Provence
• Delphi.

Many readers know Lawrence Durrell as the famed author of the lush and sensuous Alexandria Quartet. However, this wonderful book contains the best of Durrell's incomparable travel writing. It is collected here for the first time in a single volume and offers a chance to rediscover the author as one of the great travel writers of the twentieth century. Durrell's passionate, evocative writing about his travelsin particular the Greek islandsis a timeless exploration of how landscapes shape our experience. This collection also re-creates a world where a struggling author or artist could buy a cliff-side house on Corfu for a pittance and begin to invent himself as a man of letters while falling in love with an alien but endlessly entertaining culture. The Lawrence Durrell Travel Reader combines the merits of great escape reading and serious literature and will interest fans of Durrell, fans of Greek islands, and lovers of travel writing.
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• v. 1. Justine
• v. 2. Balthazar
• v. 3. Mountolive
• v. 4. Clea.

Provence, where Lawrence Durrell has lived for 30 years, is the motif of this book. It offers the traveller intriguing things they will not find elsewhere and preserves memories and cameos of the Midi and its people. The book aims to capture the essential spirit of the land and those of its warriors, historians, philosophers and poets. The Romans gave form to Provence and Durrell looks at the road systems, the Pont du Gard, the Maison Carree, the arenas, theatres, arches, bridges, memorials and towns. There are chapters on the author's enthusiasms such as bullfighting, the mediaeval Courts of Love and the troubadours, the meals and strange drinks, burial customs, coins and fountains and the favours of Cunegonde. 19 of the author's poem are included.
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