Peter Levi paints a radiant portrait of the Greece he came to know through a lifetime of exploration. As a young scholar he was fascinated by its ruined cities and majestic mountains. Later, he lived in Athens through the dark days of the dictatorship when his political life led back to secret alliances made during the civil war and the earlier occupation, back to murder, starvation and corpse-filled quarries. Lastly he describes the country through the mature eyes of a family man, with the ripened sensibility of an acclaimed poet. This is a precious fusion of experience and insight from one philhellene to all those who have come to love Greece.