Lawrence Durrell Conference in Crete

The Lawrennce Durrell conference will be held at Rethymnon in Crete this June.

At the end of June I will be at Rethymnon in Crete where I will be giving one of the keynote talks at the opening of the International Lawrence Durrell Society conference.

The theme of the conference is the Greek world during the Second World War.  At the German invasion of Greece in 1941, Lawrence Durrell with his wife and infant daughter made a perilous escape from the Peloponnese, sailing in an overloaded caique to Crete.  From there they were taken by a naval vessel to safety at Alexandria, where he wrote Prospero's Cell about Corfu and began The Alexandria Quartet.  Also while he was in Alexandria Durrell began The Dark Labyrinth (originally called Cefalù), set in a modern-day version of the legendary labyrinth at Knossos in Crete.

In keeping with the wartime theme there will also be talks and excursions to do with Patrick Leigh Fermor whose SOE unit and members of the Greek resistance famously captured the German commandant of Crete and spirited him away into the mountains and eventually into British captivity in Egypt.

I am pleased to see that during the conference Andreas Georgiadis will be exhibitng his wonderful drawings illustrating The Alexandria Quartet.