Konstantinos Alsinos 

‘The Wound of the World: Readings and Discussion’

Bush House (Lecture Theatre 1), King’s College London 

30 Aldwych, London WC2B 4BG

Friday, 2 June 2023, 7pm

The Anglo-Hellenic League, in partnership with the Centre for Hellenic studies (CHS) at King’s College London and the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, invites you to attend readings and discussion of Konstantinos Alsinos’s new crime novel, Η πληγή του κόσμου (The Wound of the World), published in Greek by Mikri Arktos (Athens) towards the end of 2022. 

At the height of the Greek crisis, retired police Inspector Nikos Eleftheriadis tries to solve a gruesome murder that has taken place on a significant date in Greek national life…

The writer will be in discussion with Dr John Kittmer, Chair of the Anglo-Hellenic League. The discussion will take place in English.

Actors Kyriaki Mitsou and Dimitra Bakalyianni will read from the book in Greek. Translations into English will be provided. 

A reception will follow.

Entrance is free but prior booking is required. Register here. 

Konstantinos Alsinos 

Konstantinos Alsinos was born in Athens in 1986. He studied acting and has taken part in many theatrical and TV productions in Greece. Now permanently established in London, he is studying psychology and criminology at the University of Westminster. The Wound of the World is his second novel. He has also published a collection of poetry. 

Council of the League

5 May 2023

David Harsent, Chiara Ambrosio, David Ricks, Gonda Van Steen and John Kittmer 

Yannis Ritsos: new English translations and visualisations

including a tribute to Edmund Keeley

The Council Room, King’s College London, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS

Monday 12 June 2023, 6pm

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990) was one of the greatest Greek poets of the twentieth century and has achieved worldwide acclaim. A prolific writer (in both poetry and prose), he lived some of the most tumultuous moments in recent Greek history. In the 1930s, his work was banned by the Metaxas dictatorship. The Greek military junta (1967-1974) proscribed his published work and prevented him from publishing new work. None of this stopped his prodigious writing. During the junta, when he was imprisoned and under house arrest, he smuggled his work overseas for publication beyond Greek shores. His fame grew: those years saw increasing international interest in and translation of Ritsos’s work. After the fall of the Colonels, he resumed his publishing career in full, writing until his death in 1990.

The Anglo-Hellenic League and the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London are pleased to introduce two new books of Ritsos’s work in English. In March, the award-winning poet David Harsent published A Broken Man in Flower: Versions of Yannis Ritsos, intro. John Kittmer (Hexham: Bloodaxe, 2023). In May, a new edition of Paul Merchant's translation of Ritsos’s Monochords was published, featuring linocut responses by Chiara Ambrosio, and a foreword by David Harsent (London: Prototype, 2023). Our event will include an introduction by John Kittmer, readings and illustrations by David Harsent and Chiara Ambrosio, and a panel discussion of these new works, chaired by Professor David Ricks. It will be preceded by a tribute by Gonda Van Steen, David Ricks and John Kittmer to Edmund Keeley (1928-2022), who was himself one of Ritsos’s most compelling translators into English.

David Harsent has published thirteen volumes of poetry. Legion won the Forward Prize. Night was thrice shortlisted in the UK and won the Griffin Poetry Prize. Fire Songs won the T.S. Eliot Prize. A new collection, Loss, appeared in 2020. Harsent has collaborated with several composers, most often with Sir Harrison Birtwistle. He holds several fellowships, including Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature and Fellowship of the Hellenic Authors Society. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Roehampton.

Chiara Ambrosio is a London-based filmmaker and visual artist, working with moving image, photography, text, sound and printed matter to explore the ways in which we remember, articulate and preserve personal and collective histories and a sense of place. Her work pays witness to and portrays that which struggles on the fringes of dominant narratives – communities, landscapes, stories, objects, perceptions, sensibilities – excluded and marginalised for a variety of different reasons but always fundamental to our understanding of what makes us human. Her work has been presented extensively both nationally and internationally at venues including the Whitechapel Gallery, Anthology Film Archives and La Cinémathèque Française.

David Ricks taught at King’s College London from 1989 to 2020 and has written on the work of many Greek poets, among them Solomos, Kalvos, Cavafy, SIkelianos, Anagnostakis, Sinopoulos, Vayenas and Ganas. He is editor (with Ingela Nilsson, Uppsala) of the journal Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.

Gonda Van Steen holds the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature in KCL’s Centre for Hellenic Studies and Department of Classics. She is the author of five books: Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (2000); Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire (2010); Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (2011); and Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974 (2015); and Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid Pro Quo? (2019).

John Kittmer is a former British Ambassador to Greece and is Chair of The Anglo-Hellenic League. He has degrees in classics and modern Greek and wrote a prize-winning PhD thesis on Yannis Ritsos.

This event will not be livestreamed or recorded. A reception will follow. There will be opportunities to purchase both new books.

If you wish to attend, please register online here. 

Council of the League

12 May 2023

Prof. Kevin Featherstone in Conversation

Katie Lentakis Memorial Fund Award 2023 Award Ceremony &

Katie Lentakis Memorial Fund Lecture 2023

The Council Room (K2.29), King’s College London, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS

Tuesday 13 June 2023, 6pm

In partnership with the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London, we are pleased to announce the annual award ceremony and lecture for the Katie Lentakis Memorial Fund Award 2023. The Award is given annually by the League in memory of Katie Lentakis, for many years a stalwart of the London Greek community and a longstanding Vice-Chair of the League. The competition is open to final-year undergraduates at King’s College London for an essay on a Greek subject. 

The ceremony will be an opportunity to applaud and, we hope, meet the winner of this year’s competition. In addition, the Department of Classics at King’s College London will be handing out the inaugural dissertation prize of the Society for Platonic Studies.

After the ceremonials are over, the annual Katie Lentakis Memorial Fund Lecture will take the form of a conversation between Prof. Kevin Featherstone, Director of the Hellenic Observatory at the LSE, and Dr John Kittmer, Chair of the League, about Prof. Featherstone’s academic career tracking the ins and outs, the ups and downs of the Greek political scene. 

Kevin Featherstone is Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the Hellenic Observatory in the European Institute at LSE. He is a political scientist who has specialised in Greek and European politics. His many books include:  Prime Ministers in Greece: the paradox of power; The Limits of Europeanisation: reform capacity and structural reform in Greece (both with D. Papadimitriou); and, Europe in Modern Greek History.  He has contributed regularly to Greek and international media.  He has interviewed all living Greek prime ministers and hosted many leading Greek figures in discussion at the LSE.  In 2021, he received the award of 'Grand Commander, Order of the Phoenix' of the Hellenic Republic and in 2022, he was made an honorary citizen of Greece by decree of President Sakellaropoulou. He is a member of the Council of the Anglo-Hellenic League.

This event will not be livestreamed or recorded.

If you wish to attend, please register online here. 

Council of the League

12 May 2023

Runciman Award Ceremony 2023 

sponsored by

the A. C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation & the A. G. Leventis Foundation

Keynote speech by Prof. Dame Mary Beard

How do we best argue for Classics?

Monday 19 June 2023, 7pm

Great Hall, King’s College London, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS

and online on Zoom

We are delighted to invite you to attend The Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award Ceremony 2023, under the joint sponsorship of the Athanasios C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation and the A. G. Leventis Foundation. 

Since 1986, the Award has rewarded annually the best book or books published the previous year in English about some aspect of Greece. The Award this year goes to the best book(s) published in 2022.

You are warmly invited to join us at our award ceremony, at which our chair of judges, Prof. Peter Frankopan, will announce the winner. The winner will attend the event and speak about the winning book. The keynote speech will be given by Prof. Dame Mary Beard on: 'How do we best argue for Classics?' The event will be introduced and chaired by Dr John Kittmer, chair of the Council of the League. A reception will follow.

Because of the attendance at our event of a VIP, we ask that all guests take their places in the Great Hall of King’s College London no later than 6.45pm. 

It is also possible to watch the event live online by Zoom.

You can find out more details about this year’s competition, including the long list and short list, on our website below and at www.runcimanaward.org. 

Mary Beard, Cambridge Emerita Professor and Fellow of Newnham College, is one of Britain's best-known Classicists. She has written numerous books including the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town; the best-selling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome; the thought-provoking Women & Power; and most recently Twelve Caesars – Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern. Her books are translated in numerous languages and she regularly gives lectures and talks at institutions and events across the globe. In addition Mary has presented highly-acclaimed television documentaries, including Meet the Romans and Rome – Empire without Limit, hosted the BBC arts show Inside Culture, and is a regular media commentator. Mary was co-presenter of the BBC landmark series, Civilisations, for which she wrote an accompanying book. She is also Classics Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and writes an engaging blog, A Don's Life. Made an OBE in 2013 for services to Classical scholarship, Mary was further made a Dame in 2018. Other accolades and roles include Royal Academy Professor of Ancient Literature, Fellow of the British Academy, recipient of the J.Paul Getty Medal and Trustee of the British Museum. Mary’s forthcoming book in the Autumn, will delve into the world of the Roman emperor.

To reserve your place(s) in the Great Hall at King’s College London, please register at: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/runciman-award-ceremony-tickets-595673163467.

To watch online, please register at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bW3vbduDR0GmP26RItuhNw. 

A recording of the event will be posted live on our YouTube channel in the days after the ceremony: see https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaG7xSWWgjr85b4ptqL5gSw. 

Council of the League

23 May 2023