Customer Reviews

Phoenix: The Station: Athos: Treasures and Men

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A beautiful and tender book about one the most remote places in a country overcome by mass tourism. Byron's enthusiasm and wit leaps off the page. A contemporary of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, John Betjeman and others of the so-called Brideshead Generation, Byron was, I think, the greatest talent of the lot because of his passinate conviction that is unobscured by the angst-ridden,boring Catholic fogeyism of the others. Byron's assertion that it is in the Byzantine empire where Hellenic culture reaches its high-point (not in 5th-century Athens)is, in my opinion, correct. I'll take the serene interior of an Orthodox church over the enigmatic Parthenon anytime.

The book was published in the late 1920s so the language is different but once I was used to it I found it to be interesting. In researching the location I found some videos from a realtively recent piece by the CBS program "60 minutes". That helped to set the mood, scene and give it more of a sense of reality. Book is well written and it is a shame the author did not live longer. This book was chosen for a club read and did provide some interesting discussion. The treasures the monks guard were later threatened by Hitler but he never did carry out his plan of looting the monasteries.