My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.

So I went instead and tasted Taki’s new white wine. Spiridion! what a wine…like the blood of a dragon and smooth as a fish…

It was no half-hearted spring, this: the whole island vibrated with it as though a great, ringing chord had been struck. Everyone and everything heard it and responded.

Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted...