ISLAND STORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 950, 25 October 1957, Page 12

ISLAND STORY

BITTER LEMONS, by Lawrence Durrell; Faber and Faber, English price 16/-.

* (Reviewed by

James

Bertram

out of the headlines; but the unresolved problem of the future of this historic Mediterranean island is likely to haunt the British Foreign Office, and the councils of the United Nations, for many years to come. Most of us are as unhappy as the Cypriots themselves about recent developments there, yet few of us know why the political situation should have deteriorated so suddenly and so tragically. Mr Durrell’s book is a delight to read in itself, and it does illuminate the Cyprus Dilemma -at first by flashes, finally by a steady concentrated beam that is focused, I feel sure, on the very heart of the matter. A poet who loves the Mediterranean, who loves Greece and the Byzantine tradition and who first went to. Cyprus in 1953 to buy a house and live in the mountains among Greek-speaking villagers, is probably a more reliable guide to the true feelings of this island people may have dropped

than the most high-powered political commentator. For his last two years, the years. of crisis, Mr Durrell was Press Adviser to the Government of Cyprus; he has an immense admiration for Sir John Harding, and every sympathy with the British troops in their ungrateful task of trying to restore order. But his lively and often moving account of the phase of violence and terror merely underlines the basic contention of his book: that the tragedy need never have happened. Where many were at fault, it seems clear that the heaviest share of blame-for mis-

understanding, obtuseness, and failure to develop a real policy for Cyprus until it was too late-must rest with Sir Anthony Eden and the British Cabinet. — Mr Durrell did not set ott to write a political book, but rather an "impressionistic study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years." His earlier chapters on tavern acquaintances, on buying a house with the aid of a Turkish merchant and rebuilding it with the help of a team of Greek villagers, on teaching sixthformers in a gymnasium in Nicosia, are

full of human comedy and revealing personal insights, Even when the scene darkens, when his former pupils become bomb-throwers and his. Greek schoolmaster friend falls victim to terrorists, he retains a poet’s eye for beauty, pity, and obstinate evidence of. the. abiding affections. The quality of the writing alone would make this an outstanding Mediterranean travel-book. Beeause Mr Durrell cares deeply about the fate of his island friends in Cyprus, it is also a personal historical document of lasting value.