ABSTRACT
In early February of 1946 the author Robert Liddell received a letter from his fellow writer Lawrence Durrell, then posted with the British Military Administration in Rhodes. Durrell wrote about a recent visit to Athens, where he had met with old friends such as George Katsimbalis and the poet George Seferis. Liddell replied in a letter from Alexandria dated simply ‘Clean Monday’: 1
Athens must have been terribly moving, I hardly dare think of it. [. . .] I want to postpone my own return to October, 1947, however - troubles in Greece tear one apart so, and involve one’s friends. All the rioting here could only touch one physically - and if one knows when it is going to happen, one can take precautions against that. Hassan tries to give me the impression that the Ramleh station to-day is a heap of corpses - and so it may be, though I doubt it. But one can be sure one doesn’t know any of them, if it is so. What a soothing reflection is that. 2
