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Durrell, Lawrence

The Alexandria Quartet, [14] 18; Prospero’s Cell; Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, [42] 30

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20070601135952 Stephen Glain,, Lawrence Durrell, Slightly Foxed Issue 14 - Mark Handley

Twilight of a Golden Age

Stephen Glain on Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet

I attacked my new assignment as a Middle East correspondent with the alacrity of a baying hound running down a wanted man. I loaded up on the standard books on the region by all the standard experts: Hitti, Hourani, Nutting, Glubb, Fromkin, Shlaim, Lewis. I consumed their separate narratives, cross-referencing one against the other and triangulating each for bias. I was a machine in perpetual motion; the more I read, the more I needed to know. By the end of my three-year stint, I had accumulated a working library of stolid non-fiction accounts of the Middle East, from the days of the Caliphate to the Second Intifada. In 2001 I took leave to write my own book.
20140601121602 Sue Gee, Lawrence Durrell, Slightly Foxed Issue 42

Where the Blue Really Begins

Sue Gee on Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell; Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

In the summer of 1965, I hitchhiked with two school friends to Greece. We had just done our A levels, with mixed results. In Corfu, we all met our first boyfriends: likewise. What cast the real spell, over all of us nice Surrey girls, were the Greek islands. And the two books we read in those enchanted weeks offered the most intense marriage of literature and experience that I can remember.

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