‘Peter Fiennes’s road trip around Greece – engagingly described in A Thing of Beauty – began with a visit to Lord Byron’s house… Fiennes’s tough talk and his down-to-earth refusal to put up with pretentious silliness contributes a lot to the pleasure of the book… [he] is well attuned to the ambivalence of hope.’
Description
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2022
‘Peter Fiennes’s road trip around Greece [is] engagingly described’ Mary Beard, TLS
‘Fiennes is a brilliant and generous guide through Greece’ Observer
‘A wonderful… really profound meditation on what it means to hope… a gorgeous excursion into Greece and across the centuries on an environmental quest’ BBC Radio 4 Open Book Book of the Year choice by Anita Roy
What do the Greek myths mean to us today?
It’s now a golden age for these tales – they crop up in novels, films and popular culture. But what’s the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for children? And what’s to be seen now at the places where heroes fought and gods once quarrelled?
Peter Fiennes travels to the sites of some of the most famous Greek myths, on the trail of hope, beauty and a new way of seeing what we have done to our world. Fiennes walks through landscapes – stunning and spoiled – on the trail of dancing activists and Arcadian shepherds, finds the ‘most beautiful beach in Greece’, consults the Oracle, and loses himself in the cities, remote villages and ruins of this storied land.
Reviews
‘Fiennes is a brilliant and generous guide… a must-read.’
‘This book is a lament for a poisoned planet… He goes in search of the numinous but relishes the bathos of modernity… not so much a travelogue as an excursion into the psyche of Anthropocene man.’
‘A wonderful book by a wonderful writer.’