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"What's the point of this, then...?", I hear you ask; "...an
'out of print' book, is one that is no longer available, isn't
it?". Well, whilst these books may not be available to order from
your local bookshop, they can be found, with varying degrees
of success, on sites such as AbeBooks,
or - far more fun - it's worth your while just mooching
around second-hand bookshops, and keeping an eye open. Believe
me, there is no better thrill than finding a dusty copy of
a book you've been looking for, for years, in a dark corner
of some far-flung second-hand bookshop.Of the 600 titles with
Cretan themes, that I possess, I have chosen just six to
feature here. I have included a "price guide", so you'll have
some idea when you are being "ripped-off", or picking up a
bargain. After these - mercifully - short pen-pictures, I have
listed other books that you may wish to pick up. These are
not reviews; just "pointers" as to what was available, and
a guide for those of you who wish to improve their library.
Happy browsing.
Prices are in Euro (€); One Euro currently equates
to around £0.70; US$1.30; AU$1.70; NZ$1.83 As of 31/1/05 |
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Adam Hopkins 'Crete,
Its Past, Present and People'. (Faber and
Faber, 1977) Why this book hasn't been reprinted, is completely
beyond me. OK, it would need to be updated - archaeological
discoveries have been tremendous in the past couple of decades
and the Cretan way of life has changed enormously since those
days - but essentially, this is the essential starter's
guide to the history of Crete. Adam Hopkins takes the reader
through the historical periods, from proto-historic times
to the Second World War, and follows this with a couple of
chapters entitled; 'Town and Country' and 'Cretan People',
which brings is up to date (or at least up to the date when
the book was published), with the everyday life of the Cretan
people. This is an absolutely beautifully written history,
and remains one of my favourites, despite the fact that it's
not at all rare. Published in both hardback and paperback PRICE
GUIDE One should be able to pick up a copy of this,
for under €15.00. NB Not to be
confused with the book of the same title, by M. N. Elliadi,
published in 1933, which is also well worth looking out for. |
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John D.S. Pendlebury 'The
Archaeology of Crete'. (Methuen 1939/1979)
The mother of all field guides, written by the one of the
island's great characters. Chronologically arranged, Pendlebury takes
the reader on a voyage of discoveries through the sites of
Crete, covering a period ranging from Neolithic (c6,000-c3000BC)
through to that of the early Byzantine era (c600 AD). First
published in 1939, it is of course, totally out of date -
pre the discovery of the "palace" of Zakros and the decipherment
of Linear B, but if one is aware of this, it's still an extremely
useful book to use on the ground. Maps accompany each
and every period of these historical periods, showing just
what was found, and when these artefacts could be dated to.
Pendlebury was murdered by the Nazis in 1941, whilst serving
as British Vice-Consul to the island (a thinly-veiled title,
allowing him to carry on with the work of making life as
hard as possible for the Nazis, with the help of the Cretans).
a great loss to the world in general, especially the archaeological
one The book was reprinted by Methuen in 1979, but that too,
is well out of print. PRICE GUIDE Anything
under €50.00 would be very reasonable. N.B.
The image used is not the cover of the book;
mine hasn't got one, but if you are looking for a copy, the
dust jacket is blue.
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Michael Llewellyn Smith 'The
Great Island' (Longmans 1965) Later to be
British ambassador to Greece, Michael Llewellyn Smith was
just "a lad" of 21 when he wrote this seminal work. He visited
Crete whilst an undergraduate at Oxford University, and this
is the result. The book is both an anthropological
look at the Cretans and a history of the island from Roman
times through to the turn of the 20th Century, including:
Arab, Venetian and Ottoman control. It's also an extremely
useful source for Cretan literature, oral tradition and song.
Sections of Barba Pantzelios' poem to Daskaloyiannis are
translated; traditional songs such as 'rizitika' and 'mantinates'
have a short chapter dedicated to them, as does the literature
of the "Cretan Renaissance". 'The Great Island' is
a charming book, well written, occasionally amusing, and
erudite throughout. An absolute ever-green. PRICE
GUIDE: Expect to pay around €30.00 for a good
copy of this. |
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Xan Fielding 'Hide
and Seek' and 'The
Stronghold' Two books, by one of my favourite
authors. Thematically very different from each other, both
are set on Crete. 'Hide and Seek' is the story of Fielding's
part in W.W.II, of which, he spent a considerable time on
'the great island'. Interesting to remember, when the first
edition of George Psychondakis' 'Cretan Runner' (still available
as a Penguin paperback) was published in 1955, the publisher's
promoted it as having been annotated by Xan Fielding. Nowadays,
of course, the fact that - the then unheard of - Patrick
Leigh Fermor, was his co-annotator and translated the book,
is one of the book's major selling points.
'Hide and
Seek' (Secker and Warburg 1954 see picture
on Tim Todd's site (linked below); this edition George
Mann 1973; both hardback) is a very personal account of
Fielding's part in W.W.II. A wonderful read; probably my
favourite book on W.W.II. Xan Fielding shows a great sense
of humour throughout, despite the books subject matter.
The author is not afraid to attack the hierarchy of British
command; or certain Cretans who allowed their personal
sense of grandeur, to cloud the overall campaign - the
author was not a great fan of colonel Andreas Papadakis
- but his inter-relations with other Cretans shows a deep
respect and love, for the people of the island. The title
refers to the game of "hide and seek" which the author "played" with
the Nazis. Not all of the book is set on Crete, but
the vast majority of it is. Rather curiously, I have seen
20 copies - or so - of the two hardback editons, in my
time, but only one paperback (WDL books - with an extremely
nasty cover design - which I also possess), which leads
me to believe that the publisher's decided to withdraw
the paperback edition. I could be wrong. PRICE
GUIDE: You'll do well to obtain a copy of this
at under €50.00, and €75.00 for the first edition.
There are dozens of other out of print (see some of these
at the bottom of this page) and available books on Crete's
part in W.W.II Antony Beevor's 'The Battle of Crete'
is the best overview of the campaign and subsequent resistance;
for out of print-titles visit Tim
Todd's excellent book page. |
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'The Stronghold: An account
of the four seasons in the White Mountains of Crete'
(Secker and Warburg 1955, hardback) is a heart-warming travelogue,
chronicling Fielding's return to Crete, a few years after
the end of W.W.II. The author visits many places in
the book, which is divided into the four distinct seasons
(Summer-Autumn: Soughia, Koustoyerako, Gavdhos, Samaria,
Azoyires; Autumn-Winter: Asi Gonia, Alones, Chania, Nippos,
Zourva; Winter-Spring: Therisso, Sphakia, Anopolis, Loutro,
Kyriakosellia; Spring-Summer: The Omalo, St Paul's, Aghios
Ionnis, Frankokastello, Kallikrati) during his year
on the island, and is really a travelogue to the nomos (district)
of Chania, rather than the White Mountains, of the title.
Fielding befriended many Cretans during his time on the island
- detailed in 'Hide and Seek' - and now he revisits some "old
allies". Whilst 'The Great Island (see above), is based on
themes, this is chronologically and geographically arranged,
and is therefore less easy to "dip into". Anthropologically,
very interesting - the book recently celebrated its 50th
year since publication, so expect places and social habits,
that you know, not to be quite the same as then - and,
as a travelogue, absolutely superb. PRICE GUIDE one
shouldn't have to pay more than €80.00 for this; but it
comes around very rarely and is one of those
books, which dealers tend to know they can get a tidy package
for. |
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Christopher Thorne 'Between
the Seas' (Sinclair-Stevenson,
1992; Hardback only) Not everybody's cup of tea, this,
but I love this book. Christopher Thorne takes himself and
his blisters, and blazes a crazed trail across Crete. Yep,
been there, done that, but not like this chap! Thorne's decision
was to traverse rather than cross the mountain ranges of
the island, so he zig-zags his way across the island, doing
his utmost to steer clear of anything that could be described
as a proper road. This meant that he walked 400 miles, rather
than the more logical 250 miles that one would expect to
walk by following the crows! Add to this, he did it all in
two weeks! We mere mortals can just read and weep at such
Heraklean efforts. So, who was this superman? An Olympic
athlete? A triathlon competitor? A hardened fells-walker,
in the prime of his youth? Nope. He was a fifty-something
professor of International Relations at the University of
Sussex. Eminently readable, even if you have no interest
in walking. A book which gives one hope. Sadly, Mr Thorne
died before the book was published. PRICE GUIDE: €30.00
would be reasonable, but copies can occasionally be found
for less. |
Other books:
Travel:
First editions of 19th century travel books, such
as TAB Spratt's 'Travels
and Researches in Crete' and Robert
Pashley's, 'Travels
in Crete' tend to fetch in excess of €1500;
however, both have been reprinted; Spratt, rather poorly
by Adolf Haakart of Amsterdam in the '80's and Pashley by the
same publisher in the '70s and in a two volume paperback by
Karavias . The latter is available at €80.00 from
The Hellenic Bookservice. There is a sizeable section on Crete,
in Richard Pococke's 'Descriptions of the East' (1743). We
sold our last set for €2,000, four years ago; they
tend to go at auction, or on Abebooks for around €8,000
nowadays. If this is all a bit rich for you, an alternative,
is Johan De Bakker's 'Across
Crete: Part one' which draws from these three sources -
and that of Edward Lear - though parts two and three, look
unlikely to appear. This is in-print and retails at €21.00
Travelogues:
Other than 'The Great Island' and 'The Stronghold', it's worth
looking out for Oliver Burch's 'Under
Mount Ida: A Journey into Crete' (Hardback
only. Ashford, 1989).PRICE GUIDE €20.00
to €30.00 and 'Crete'
by John Freely (Paperback). PRICE GUIDE:
less than €15.00 Jackson Webb 'The
Last Lemon Grove' (Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
1977) A bit of a curiosity piece this. Not the world's most
exciting travelogue, but a sedate evocation of everyday life
in the town of Paleochora, as seen through the eyes of an American
tourist, in the 1970's. It's a charming read, but don't
expect fireworks. You'd expect 'The Last Lemon Grove' to be
rarer than it is, but the introduction by Dilys Powell probably
meant that more were printed than otherwise would have been
expected. PRICE GUIDE: Expect to pay €20.00
to €30.00 for this.
Guide books:
Of course guide books need constant updates and revisions,
so it isn't necessarily a good idea to buy old, or out of print
books in this genre. One exception, in the excellent 'Travellers
Guide' series, is John Bowman's 'Crete'.
Yes, it's out of date, and yes, most of the practical information
included will be no good to man or beast, nowadays - "you can
get a nice meal in a plain place for around 25 drachmas" (mmm!)
- but it's a wonderfully written guidebook, and remains enormously
informative. PRICE GUIDE: You shouldn't need
to pay much more than €7.50 for this. My favourite out-of-print
walking guide is 'Crete: Off
the Beaten Track' by Bruce and Naomi Caughey (Cicerone,
1989), which has a mixture of "country walks" and "mountain
hikes". PRICE GUIDE: If you can find a copy,
it shouldn't cost much more than €12.00
History:
Archaeology:
Arthur Evans' 'Palace of Minos'
is an enormous 4 volume (MacMillan, 1921-1939; in 7 parts,
including index) work, detailing the painstaking excavations
at Knossos, in the early part of the 20th century. Many different
facets of the site, and indeed the lives of the Bronze Age
Cretans are included, as you'd expect from a book which runs
to several thousand pages. This is most definitely for the
specialist. It was reprinted in the 1960's by Biblos and Tanner. PRICE
GUIDE: You'll be doing very well if you can get a
complete set of the first edition for under €6,000; even
the reprints tend to go for in excess of €2,000. The best
guide to the "palaces" is James Walter Graham's 'The
Palaces of Crete' (Princeton 1962), though
this also suffers from being slightly out of date PRICE
GUIDE €30,00 A book looking at the Matriarchal
aspects of Bronze Age Crete, is 'Crete
Reclaimed: A feminist exploration of bronze age Crete',
by Susan Evesdaughter. Given the evidence
of female involvement in this period, one would have thought
there would be more of these.PRICE GUIDE €15.00.
An excellent book on the period from Stone Age through to Iron
Age - though with a somewhat strange title, given that most
of the book covers "historic Crete" - is R.W. Harrison's
'Prehistoric Crete' (Pelican
1962) .PRICE GUIDE Despite being published
by Pelican (an imprint of Penguin), this book is surprisingly
rare - €14.00 to €21.00 - would be about right for
a copy in good condition, anything less than that, and you're
getting a bargain. A very good encyclopaedia of Ancient Crete
is Costis Davaris' 'Guide to
Cretan Antiquities' (Noyes 1976) PRICE
GUIDE €25.00-€30.00
Arab Rule:
'The Conquest of Crete by the
Arabs: CA.
824: A turning point in the struggle between Byzantium
and Islam' by Vassilios Christides.
A wonderfully thorough book on an era of history, hardly
touched by other history books. PRICE GUIDE:
You'd do well to get a copy of this for under €70.00
20th Century:
A great book full of statistics, statistics and statistics,
is Leland G Allbaugh's 'Crete:
A Case Study of An Underdeveloped Area' (Princeton
1953). Of course, it's well out-of-date, but a nonetheless
interesting look at demography, geography topography and miscellany.PRICE
GUIDE €60.00
Herbert Adam Gibbon's 'Venizelos'
(Houghton Mifflin, 1920) is an authoritative biography
of the great man, though, of course, its still rather early
in Venizelos' life to enable the reader to draw proper conclusions.PRICE
GUIDE €40.00; anything less, grab it! An absolutely
superb short biography of Venizelos, is contained within Eugene
S. Bagger's 'Eminent Europeans' PRICE
GUIDE This can be picked up for less than €5.00
(!), so if you are interested in post W.W.I. politics, then
you have - hardly - nothing to lose.
W.W.II: As I have said, take a look at Tim
Todd's book pages for a far more thorough collection
of books on this subject. Books that are worth looking out
for, other than Xan Fielding's 'Hide and Seek' are: M
C Comeau's 'Operation Mercury: A British
Airman's first-hand account of the Fall of Crete in 1941';
PRICE GUIDE €30.00; John Hall Spencer's
'Battle for Crete' PRICE
GUIDE €40.00; David Thomas' 'Nazi
Victory: Crete 1941' PRICE GUIDE €35.00 A.M. "Sandy" Rendell's Appointment
in Crete PRICE GUIDE €30.00 and Edward
Howell's 'Escape to Live';
the first two chapters of which, are set on Crete. PRICE
GUIDE €15-€25.00
Finally - and by way as a caveat - a number of books on various
themes have been republished by 'Efstathiades'. Whilst we should
be grateful that this means that books such as the wonderful Dilys
Powell's 'Villa Ariadne' Hans
Wunderlich's "great idea at the time" 'The
Secret of Crete', David MacNeil Doren's
'Winds of Crete' and Murray
Elliott's 'Vasili: The
Lion of Crete', are still available, the quality
of the printing is awful, so it may be worth your while checking
on Abe for
books such as this, before buying them in Greece, or indeed
from the world's largest specialist bookshop, currently residing
in London, NW5.
Stelios Jackson; January 2005
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