free download here - Michael Llewellyn-Smith

Foreword
This book contains plenty of history, and a fair amount of ‘travel’. It is intended
to be an introduction to Crete. It is one man’s view of the island and its culture
and its plate in Greek history. In the attempt to see Crete whole I have to
move from the general (objective history) to the particular (the impact of
Crete on us now). The form therefore - I am aware of the dangers of falling
between two stools - is deliberately chosen. Caution: the book is not concerned
with Minoan civilization and archaeology.
Anyone well read in Cretan studies will recognize my debts, especially in
the chapter on art, a subject about which I am ignorant. This chapter could
not have been written without the expert work of M. Hadzidakis and K.
Kalokyris to consult. Authors whose works I have found useful are mentioned
in the references and bibliography. But I must make a general acknowledgement
to the periodical KρηƬLKά Xρóvlkα (Cretica Chronka), whose pages are
essential to anyone who studies Crete.
I must also thank Anthony Bryer, for my initiation into the mysteries of
Byzantine art; George Psychoundakis, for valuable information about the
folklore of his own village, Asi Gonia; Pavlos Gyparakis, for permission to
quote from his unpublished diary. I am indebted to Galaxias Editions, Athens,
for permission to quote from Pandelis Prevelakis’s The Chronicle of a City and
George Sepheris’s Introduction to Emtokritos. The Editor of The Listener has
allowed me to reproduce an article of mine originally entitled ‘The White
Mountains of Crete’ (12 January 1961) in the Introduction.
Finally, especially warm thanks to Julie du Boulay, who accompanied me on
an exhilarating trek through the White Mountains, supplied the better of
the photographs, and sent useful and hard-won material from Athens while I
was writing the book in England.
M. J. Ll. S
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