Affair of the Heart, An

Dilys Powell

From Shelf: My Eland Collection

Dilys Powell s love affair with Greece and the Greeks began on a sun?baked archaeological dig in 1931. Joining her husband, the archaeologist Humfry Payne, on the remote peninsula of Perachora, she came to know the villagers who laboured on the site, camping beside them year after year, for months at a time.

Despite personal tragedy, occupation and civil war, Powell s affair of the heart continued. She returned time and again through the `40s and `50s, and with each visit there was a reconciliation with her idyllic memories, despite the changing reality of Greece. Both with Hunfry and without, she explored remote mountains in the company of shepherds, isolated stretches of coast and island with local fishermen and olive-dotted hillsides with their subsistence farmers.