Michael Llewellyn-Smith | |
Welcome to Michael Llewellyn-Smith's official website | |
![]() Michael Llewellyn-Smith was born in 1939 and brought up in England, with two sisters and two brothers, at a school in Berkshire where his father was headmaster. He was educated at Wellington College at Crowthorne, Berkshire, a public school founded in memory of the Great Duke of Wellington, and at New College, Oxford University, where he studied classics, ancient history and philosophy. He went on to obtain a D Phil at St Antony's College Oxford, for his doctoral thesis on the Greek occupation of Smyrna (Izmir) and western Asia Minor in 1919-22. He is the author of four books with themes in Greek history and culture. The Great Island is a book about the history, culture and folklore of the island of Crete, reflecting his travels and researches there in the early 1960s (travels with a donkey!). Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919-1922 is the story of Greece's ill-fated venture into Asia Minor, ending with the destruction of Smyrna and the end of the ancient Greek communities of Asia Minor. Olympics in Athens 1896: the Invention of the Modern Olympic Games is the story of how the young Greek state and the city of Athens developed rapidly to a point at which they found it possible to host successfully the first modern Games. Athens: a Cultural and Literary History presents the life and culture of the city of Athens across the centuries, explaining how the modern city copes with its ancient heritage. Michael Llewellyn-Smith has also written a short book about the history of the British Embassy at Athens, which was the house of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos before it became the British Embassy in 1936. He is currently researching the life of Venizelos. He has lectured extensively at Universities and for Swan Hellenic Discovery Cruising. He has written reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and the Anglo- Hellenic Review. Michael Llewellyn-Smith joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1970 and served in it for thirty years, in Moscow, Paris, Warsaw and Athens as well as London. He was British Ambassador in Poland from 1991-96 and in Greece from 1996-99. As student, teacher, diplomat and traveller he has spent more than eleven years in Greece. He is married, to Colette née Gaulier. They live in south Oxfordshire, and travel often to Greece and France. They have two children, Stefan and Sophie, and four grandchildren, David, Alexander, Nicolas and Alice. Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith was awarded the CMG in 1990 and the KCVO
in 1996. |
![]() The Great Island is a personal view of the island of Crete, its culture and its place in history. For the Greeks Crete embodies not only the astonishing Minoan civilization but the heroic spirit of independence which supported the Cretans through seven centuries of Venetian and Turkish domination and which finally won them their freedom. The author elaborates his themes through his own first-hand impressions of landscape and people, through Cretan history, folklore and literature, and through the icons and frescoes of the island which was the birthplace of El Greco. The picture which emerges is of a heroic, humane, strongly traditional attitude to life. "Llewellyn-Smith has the key. His unobtrusive travels and researches
into song and poetry are done to explain others, not himself...an excellent
book" (David Pryce-Jones, The Times) THE GREAT ISLAND is now available as a free download here(1.8Mb) |
![]() In January 1915, soon after the start of the First World War, Britain offered Greece 'important territorial compensation' in Asia Minor if she would join the war on the side of the Entente. This proposal set in motion a train of events which ended tragically in 1922 with the destruction of Smyrna (Izmir) and the uprooting of Hellenism in Asia Minor. Michael Llewellyn-Smith sets the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the war in Anatolia against the background of Greece's 'Great Idea' - the incorporation of the unredeemed Greeks around the Aegean basin within the bounds of the Greek Kingdom - and of Great Power rivalries in the Near East. He traces the origins of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos's 'Ionian Vision' to his joint conception with David Lloyd George of an Anglo-Greek entente in the Eastern Mediterranean. This absorbing narrative is the classic account of the disaster which has shaped the politics and society of Greece. "A theme worthy of Thucydides...a fine, temperate and engrossing study"
(International Affairs) |
![]() On 5 April 1896 James Connolly of the Suffolk Athletic Club, Boston, Massachusetts, projected himself 13 metres and 71 cm through the Attic air in the newly restored Panathenaic Stadim of Athens, in the hop, step and jump, and became the first Olympic victor for more than 1500 years.' This fascinating book weaves together three strands in the revival of the Olympic Games: the nineteenth century explosion of sport in Britain and the US, France, Germany and other European countries, which created the conditions for international competition; the social and economic progress of the young Greek state which made Athens a plausible candidate as host of the Games; and the genius of the idealist Baron Pierre de Coubertin in yoking together amateur sport and internationalism in a new institution with rich symbolic power. The story moves from Athens to the Rugby School of Dr Arnold and Tom Brown; Much Wenlock in Shropshire, home of an Olympic experiment which inspired Coubertin; Paris of the Second Empire; Princeton University in the United States; Olympia in the Peloponnese where extensive German excavations revealed the site of the ancient Olympics; and back to Athens for the climax of the Games. Besides Coubertin, the cast of characters includes the great German classicist Ernst Curtius who revealed Olympia to the world, the best-selling Greek novelist Dimitrios Vikelas who became the first President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC); Crown Prince Constantine who made the Games happen and whose career ended in tragedy; and the young farmer Spyros Louis who won the newly invented Marathon race. The athletes themselves were heroic amateurs from a departed age of innocence, where an American could enter the discus event on the spur of the moment and win the medal. Yet they laid the foundations of a unique sporting institution. This book is the rich and entertaining story of one of the most potent symbols of modern times. "The best account of the invention of the Marathon is given in Michael
Llewellyn Smith's sharp and elegant history of the first international
modern Olympics...He captures brilliantly the atmosphere of Athens in
the late nineteenth century." (Mary Beard, TLS) |
![]() Modern Athens is a bustling, overgrown city, continually coming to terms with its illustrious past. Dominated by the Parthenon, the world-famous symbol of classical antiquity, it has been touched by every aspect of Greece's turbulent history, suffering invasions and occupations, sieges, division and dictatorship, and has grown dramatically into a metropolis of four million people. Mixing old and new, the Greek capital is a treasure house of eastern Orthodox and western culture, rich in the visual arts, architecture and poetry. Michael Llewellyn-Smith describes the history and culture of Athens, site of the 2004 Olympic Games and city of monuments enduring, purged and restored. Exploring its streets and squares, he reveals layers of Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman history, elegant Bavarian neoclassical buildings, and a modern city of concrete and glass, traffic and pollution. * City of Visitors: treasure hunters and philhellenes; Byron and Chateaubriand; Thackeray and Mark Twain; Freud, Virginia Woolf and Winston Churchill * City of Olympians: host of the first modern Games of 1896 and the Olympiad of 2004; the revival of the Olympic idea * City of Athenians: classical soldiers and thinkers; poets; politicians and princes; migrants and refugees from Greece and beyond
"Popular history at its best, absorbing, witty and challenging...a warm
fondness for Athens, in all its complexity, suffuses every page."
(Michael Squire, TLS)
Athens: a Cultural and Literary History is also published in Greek by Hestia, Athens. |
![]() This short book, published in parallel text in English and Greek, tells
the story of the fine house on Loukianou Street, Athens, which is now
the British Ambassador's Residence. The handsome neo-classical house was
commissioned by Helena Schilizzi, the wife of the Greek statesman
Eleftherios Venizelos, in the 1930s. It was designed by the architect
Anastasios Metaxas, who also designed the restored Panathenaic Stadium
where the 1896 Olympic Games were held. |
![]() The British School at Athens is renowned for its discoveries in Bronze
Age and Classical archaeology. This book reveals for the first time that
in parallel with this story of archaeology and the classics, another theme
runs persistently through the history of the School from its foundation
in 1886. This is the contribution of British scholars to the study of
Byzantine and modern Greek culture, art and architecture, anthropology,
geography, folklore, history and language. Richly illustrated with material
from the School's photographic archive, the book sets out the achievements
of scholars such as R M Dawkins, F W Hasluck and A J B Wace. Others whose
achievements are assessed include the great Scottish historian George
Finlay and the topographer Colonel Leake. The book explores also the rich
holdings in Byzantine church art held in the School's Byzantine Research
Fund Archive. Contributors include Metropolitan Kallistos (on Mount Athos)
and scholars from British universities and the National Hellenic Research
Foundation. |
Michael Llewellyn-Smith has lectured widely on Greece and Greek history. His lectures include:
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Michael Llewellyn Smith has contributed chapters and articles as follows:
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