Why a Booktrail?
1950s onwards: A vivid evocation of the past and a deft examination of the dangerous power of memory,
Swimming To Ithaca
What you need to know before your trail
Dee Denham was once the toast of Colonial Cyprus. She is now lying on her death bed and tells her son that her illness is a punishment for what she has done. He is stunned and is determined to find out what she means by these final words to him. In an attempt to do this, he finds faded photographs, love letters and everything else he can lay his hands on. What he finds, and what is revealed in contacted on the tiny island of Cyprus at the end of Empire, a place of oleander and carob trees, cocktails at the Harbour Club. But at the same time, adultery hides in shuttered bedrooms, ghostly admirers wander the corridors here and elsewhere and conspirators, lovers and spies wander around the island at will.
Just what happened with Dee Denham in Cyprus and why does it haunt her still?
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Cyprus in the fifties was a dangerous and difficult time to be – for Dee as a military wife even more so. Via letters and forgotten papers, the story comes to life. Cyprus is evoked in every which way from the dancing, to the cocktails with the dangerous military alliances and the suspicious glances from both sides.
“I see Cyprus as the crossroads of the Mediterranean. A melting pot. If the Cypriots seize the moment, they can show us the way to the future”
This is the story of the struggle between the British colonials and EOKA, the Cypriot independence movement. Dee is the wife of one of the British officers but becomes torn between her duties and what is going on behind the scenes. She meets and falls in love with a Cypriot taxi driver, who is involved with this secret underground world and so begins the story that unravels into misery and despair.
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