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Note: Although the Anglo-Hellenic League is a member society of the Hellenic Centre, and has a post-box at the Hellenic Centre, it is not affiliated with the Hellenic Community Trust or the Hellenic Centre in any other way. If you would like to contact the Hellenic Centre, you will find information here. We regret that we are unable to forward messages to the Hellenic Centre. 

The Anglo-Hellenic League

Dedicated to promoting Anglo-Greek understanding and friendship, through charitable and cultural work. 

News                                                                                            

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 powerThe 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

JUDGES ANNOUNCE THE SHORT LIST FOR 

THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2023 

PRESS NOTICE

The judging panel for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award, given annually for a book about Greece, has agreed the short list for the competition in 2023.

Out of their long list of 24 books announced in January, the judges have selected seven books for their short list.

Peter Frankopan, the chair of judges, said: “This has been a vintage year for the Runciman Award. We’ve been blessed to read an extraordinary group of books in a seemingly endless range of genres. This is such an exciting short list that shows the very best of writing about Greece, Greek cultures and Greek histories. I’m not sure how we will find a winner when we next meet; any of these could be the one we choose; I’d be thrilled with any of them…”

The short list of seven titles is attached.

The Award Ceremony for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award 2023 will be held in the Great Hall of King’s College London on Monday 19 June 2023, at 7pm. Details of the award ceremony and how to reserve seats for it will be announced in early May. 

The Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award is sponsored by the A.C. Laskaridis Charitable Foundation and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. The value of the prize to the winner is £10,000.

Council of the League

12 April 2023

 

THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2023

SHORT LIST

Title

Author

Press

Period

Genre

RRP

Heritage Aesthetics

Anthony Anaxagorou

 

Granta Books

Modern

Poetry

£10.99

Looking for Theophrastus: Travels in Search of a Lost Philosopher

 

Laura Beatty

Atlantic Books

Antiquity

Biography

£16.99

The Greek Myths that Shape the Way We Think

 

Richard Buxton

Thames & Hudson

Antiquity

Mythology / Literature

£20

Fear of Light

 

Julietta Harvey

Starhaven 

Modern 

Fiction

£12.50

A New History of Greek Mathematics

 

Reviel Netz

CUP

Antiquity

History of Ideas

£34.99

This Afterlife: Selected Poems

 

A.E. Stallings

Carcanet

Diachronic

Poetry

£25.19 / £15.99

Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body

 

Caroline Vout

Profile

Antiquity

Art History

£25

 

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

Since 1986, the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award has rewarded annually the best book published in the previous year in English about Greece or on a Greek subject. The Award is open to scholarly and creative books and to translations into English of Greek literary works. 

The judges for the Award in 2023 are:

Prof. Peter Frankopan (chair)

Dr Vassiliki Kolocotroni

Prof. Judith Mossman

Dr Oliver Thomas 

Dr Sofka Zinovieff 

Keep up with our news on: www.runcimanaward.org and www.anglohellenicleague.org.  

Enquiries to: John Kittmer (Award Administrator) runciman@anglohellenicleague.org  

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