Category Archives: Uncategorized

When Nikos Kazantzakis was a young boy he would have watched his father and his father’s friends fight in the Cretan rebellions against the Ottoman Turks, who then ruled Crete. As a teenager and a young adult, after Crete became … Continue reading →

One of the more striking things about living in Greece is the existence of a very active Communist party. Communism in Canada and the US was always something that happened elsewhere. Here it’s different. For example, in little villages like … Continue reading →

Just after Christmas my family and I visited Knossos in Greece. After seeing Sir Arthur Evans’s reconstruction I was curious about the thinking and evidence behind it. This book was available for download, so I bought it and I recently … Continue reading →

In my first posting on the Greek language I gave a broad historical overview of the Greek language. In the second I talked briefly about Mycenean Greek which we know from clay tablets and inscriptions written in the syllabic Linear … Continue reading →

I moved to Greece a little over three months ago. I had never been there before until a visit after my interview in Brussels, and I don’t think I ever had it on my list of Things To Do Before … Continue reading →

If you know me you will know that I am interested in languages. Not that I am a linguist – I am fluent in English, but for someone born in a town that is 95% francophone I speak French terribly, … Continue reading →

As some of you know, I’ve been working on a PhD dissertation for the past five years. The first couple of years were largely reading and reflecting, what my friend Tamsin Jones Farmer calls “passive cogitation”. The scheme of the … Continue reading →