Anglo-Greek Attitudes: an Introduction

Abstract

The photograph on the dust jacket of this book is emblematic of the relations, at once intense and troubled, between Britain and Greece, two countries which, although situated at opposite ends of Europe,have been closely linked at various times during the century and a half or so since Greece, partly as a consequence of British intervention, became an independent state in 1830. It depicts the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, together with Archbishop Damaskinos ofAthens and All Greece, in Athens on 26 December 1944.1 Churchill had undertaken the (then) exhausting journey to the Greek capital in a desperate attempt to stem the bitter fighting that had erupted some three weeks earlier between erstwhile allies, ELAS, the military wing of the communist-controlled resistance movement EAM, and the British troops that, earlier in October, had accompanied the exiled government headed by Georgios Papandreou back to Greece on its liberationfrom three and a half years of harsh occupation by the Germans, Italians and Bulgarians.