Phoenix: The Station: Athos: Treasures and Men

A beautiful and tender book about one the most remote places in a country overcome by mass tourism. Byron's enthusiasm and wit leaps off the page. A contemporary of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Betjeman and others of the so-called Brideshead Generation, Byron was, I think, the greatest talent of the lot because of his passinate conviction that is unobscured by the angst-ridden,boring Catholic fogeyism of the others. Byron's assertion that it is in the Byzantine empire where Hellenic culture reaches its high-point (not in 5th-century Athens)is, in my opinion, correct. I'll take the serene interior of an Orthodox church over the enigmatic Parthenon anytime.