Finding peace after war in the coastal mountains of Mallorca

In blazing sunshine, beneath the shade of a tree heavy with lemons, I soaked up the atmosphere of the place one of the greatest literary figures in the English language once called home. In the hilltop village of Deiá, on Mallorca’s west coast, Robert Graves – who chronicled the First World War in graphic and hard-hitting poems and moved millions with his blindingly honest memoir, Goodbye to

All That – lived for more than half a century.

In the run-up to the centenary of the signing of the Armistice it seemed appropriate to be in the beautiful village looking out on the Mediterranean from where a man who withstood, with millions of others the horrors of the Great War, decided to live out the majority of his life. It’s understandable after the mud, the rain, the rats and the bullets of the western front, Graves should have fallen for sunshine, beaches, olive oil and wine in a house he had built by the sea.

He was in the lucky position of being able to afford to live in such circumstances. Millions of others who faced just as terrible a time in war, never had the chance to make a new life in the sun. Graves – through literary genius and good luck – was able to blaze a trail for many in establishing spectacular mountains of western Mallorca, and the holidaymakers who came for a week or two. Put bluntly, the former were more valuable users of the services and purchasers of the goods the local trades people could provide. By the 1960s, massive development around the Bay of Palma opened the island up to mass tourism and the rest is holiday history.

Mallorca today still welcomes the well-heeled to their second homes in the hills around Deiá and other smart and less easily accessible parts of the island, while the hotels and high-rise apartment blocks provide holiday accommodation at every price point.

Graves’ old home – Casa de Robert Graves – is now on the tourist map. For seven euros you can watch a short film about his life and then see the garden he and his family created, stand in his study where global classics like I, Claudius were written, and even operate the water pump which Graves used to draw water up to his kitchen when the generator failed.

Back at Palma airport, queuing for the budget flight home, the First World War feels every one of its hundred years away. People from all over Europe, now more or less united where once they fought and killed, are leaving after a holiday. Graves never left; his last resting place is in Deiá, the perfect antidote to conflict in Europe, more than 100 years ago – and today too.

After the mud, the rain, the rats and the bullets, the sunshine, beaches and wine came as a relief