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‘Journeys, like artists, are born and not made ’, Lawrence Durrell begins his encomium to Cyprus, Bitter Lemons. For millennia, this Mediterranean island was a staging post to the Middle East; then, in British imperial times, it was close to the Suez Canal, portal to India. In this compelling, previously unpublished memoir, skilfully edited by Nicholas Stanley-Price (who has an especial knowledge of Cyprus’ archaeology and history of antiquities management), John Hilton, briefly the British colony’s first Director of Antiquities in 1934, gives a vivid introduction to the island in the 1930s, and to the oddities of its colonial government.
This memoir is also a story of tawdry intrigue, as the inexperienced Hilton falls foul of certain colleagues and is summarily terminated. It is much more than an administrative history, as the colony pursued new antiquities’ legislation. Notably, the island’s personalities, worthy of an Agatha Christie novel, fill every page. Perhaps its greatest strength, though, is Hilton’s lyrical joy at being on Cyprus itself (particularly in the contemporary correspondence that he quotes from), as well as his heady ambition to introduce the island to tourists. To rework Durrell’s famous phrase, as this book elegantly illustrates, archaeologists and antiquities administrators are not born, they are made.
REVIEW RICHARD HODGES
Colonial Intrigues and My Dismissal as Director of Antiquities: A Memoir of Cyprus in the 1930s
John R Hilton (ed. Nicholas Stanley-Price)
Archaeopress, £35
ISBN 978-1805830641
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