Dedicated to promoting Anglo-Greek understanding and friendship, through charitable and cultural work.
Dr Iain Gordon Brown FSA FRSE
‘Edinburgh as the Athens of the North’
Friends Room, Hellenic Centre, 16/18 Paddington Street, London W1U 5AS
Tuesday, 7 March 2023, 7pm
In the years between about 1810 and 1850, Edinburgh – long and affectionately known as ‘Auld Reekie’ – came to think of itself and to be widely regarded as something else. The city became ‘Modern Athens’, or subsequently ‘the Athens of the North’. This phrase is well-known, but tends to disguise the often confused and contradictory messages hidden within the convenience of a trite term.
Dr Iain Gordon Brown’s new book Auld Greekie: Edinburgh as the Athens of the North examines the circumstances underlying a remarkable change in perception of a place and an age. It looks in detail at the ‘when’, the ‘why’, the ‘by whom’, the ‘how’ and the ‘with what consequences’ of the most interesting and complex metamorphosis of one modern, northern city into an image (whether physical, or spiritual or both) of another, ancient city remote in time and location. The story has its topographical, artistic and architectural dimensions – ‘the Modern Athens’ came to boast a splendid assemblage of Greek Revival buildings forming a townscape without peer – but also its social, cerebral and philosophical ones. Many Edinburgh citizens thought and spoke of themselves as ‘Modern Athenians’. In doing so, however, they laid themselves open to ridicule, ranging from benign satire to hostility and vituperation. Opposition to the notion of a ‘Greek’ Edinburgh – in terms of civic consciousness, and in the physical expression of that ideal (to many perceived as alien and un-Scottish) through the elegant and scholarly Greek Revival style of architecture and design – forms a major part of a story forming a fascinating episode in the history of British taste.
Edinburgh of the late Enlightenment may well have been thought of, for one reason or another, as ‘Athenian’. But, in essence, it remained what it had always been. Maybe, however, for a brief period it was really a sort of hybrid city: ‘Auld Greekie’.
We are delighted that Dr Iain Gordon Brown has agreed to talk to us, through what will be a richly illustrated lecture, about the concept and reality of Edinburgh as the Athens of the North.
Dr Iain Gordon Brown, whose academic career began as a student of ancient history and classical archaeology, is a graduate of the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge and a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was formerly Principal Curator of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, where he is now an Honorary Fellow. Between 2012 and 2017, he held the elected office of Curator of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s national academy. Having served as President of the Old Edinburgh Club and as a Trustee of Edinburgh World Heritage, Iain is currently an Associate of the Centre for the History of the Book in the University of Edinburgh. He is a Vice-President of the Edinburgh Decorative and Fine Arts Society. In 2014 he was appointed Consultant to the Robert and James Adam Drawings Cataloguing Project at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.
A widely-published scholarly author, Iain has written extensively on a broad range of inter-related subjects connected with the period of the Enlightenment, and especially on the literature, art and architecture of the golden age of Scottish culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Auld Greekie brings together many of his long-standing interests, and builds on a lifetime’s study of place and period.
This event is open to members and supporters of the league. A wine reception will follow. Entry is free, but prior registration is required. Sign up through Eventbrite here. Please book well in advance (registration closes on 6 March).
Council of the League
6 February 2023
JUDGES ANNOUNCE THE LONG LIST FOR THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2023
PRESS NOTICE
The judging panel for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award, given annually for a book about Greece, has agreed a long list of 24 books for the competition in 2023.
Out of 47 books submitted for the Award, the judges selected 24 to form their long list. The list, which covers books published globally in English in 2022, includes books on history, biography, literature and philosophy, plus novels, poetry and literary translation. The books selected span Hellenic experience from antiquity until today.
The full long list of 24 titles is attached.
The Award Ceremony for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award 2023 is scheduled to be held in the Great Hall of King’s College London on Monday 19 June 2023, at 7pm. Details of the award ceremony and of the short list will be announced in due course.
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
10 January 2023
NOTES:
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
THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2023
LONG LIST
Title |
Author |
Press |
Period |
Genre |
RRP |
SCHOLARLY BOOKS
|
|||||
Nafplio: Biography of a Greek Town |
Matt Stanley |
Aetos Press |
Diachronic |
History |
£12.99 |
|
|||||
Looking for Theophrastus: Travels in Search of a Lost Philosopher |
Laura Beatty |
Atlantic Books |
Antiquity |
History of Philosophy |
£16.99 |
The Greek Myths that Shape the Way We Think |
Richard Buxton |
Thames & Hudson |
Antiquity |
Mythology / Literature |
£20 |
Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity |
Sarah F. Derbew |
CUP |
Antiquity |
Literature / Art History / Anthropology |
£29.99 |
Herodotus and Imperial Greek Literature: Criticism, Imitation, Reception |
N. Bryant Kirkland |
OUP |
Antiquity |
History |
£64 |
The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture |
Jason König |
Princeton UP |
Antiquity |
Cultural History |
£35 |
A New History of Greek Mathematics |
Reviel Netz |
CUP |
Antiquity |
History of Ideas |
£34.99 |
The Classical Parthenon: Recovering the Strangeness of the Ancient World |
William St Clair |
Open Book Publishers |
Antiquity |
History / Art History |
£40.30 / £25.95 |
The Lives of Ancient Villages: Rural Society in Roman Anatolia |
Peter Thonemann |
CUP |
Antiquity |
History / Ethnography |
£29.99 |
Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body |
Caroline Vout |
Profile |
Antiquity |
Art History |
£25 |
|
|||||
The Christian Invention of Time: Temporality and the Literature of Late Antiquity |
Simon Goldhill |
CUP |
Late Antiquity / Byzantium |
Literature / History / Cultural History / Religion |
£34.99 |
Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History |
Lucy Parker |
OUP |
Late Antiquity / Byzantium |
History / Religion |
£75 |
New Rome: The Roman Empire in the East, AD 395 - 700 |
Paul Stephenson |
Profile |
Late Antiquity / Byzantium |
History |
£30 |
|
|||||
Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars |
Daisy Dunn |
W&N |
Modern |
Literature / Biography / History of Scholarship |
£20 |
The Improbable Heroine: Lela Karayanni and the British Secret Services in World War II Greece |
Stylianos Perrakis |
De Gruyter |
Modern |
Biography |
£90 |
Who Saved the Parthenon? A New History of the Acropolis Before, During and After the Greek Revolution |
William St Clair |
Open Books Publishers |
Modern |
History |
£50.95 / £40.95 |
CREATIVE BOOKS / TRANSLATIONS
|
|||||
Stone Blind: Medusa’s Story |
Natalie Haynes |
Pan Macmillan / Mantle |
Antiquity |
Fiction |
£18.99 |
Lion |
Conn Iggulden |
Penguin |
Antiquity |
Fiction |
£20 |
A Little Brown Sea |
Charles Foster |
Fair Acre |
Modern |
Fiction |
£18.99 / £9.99 |
Fear of Light |
Julietta Harvey |
Starhaven |
Modern |
Fiction |
£12.50 |
|
|||||
This Afterlife: Selected Poems |
A.E. Stallings |
Carcanet |
Diachronic |
Poetry |
£25.19 / £15.99 |
Imperium |
Jay Gao |
Carcanet |
Antiquity |
Poetry |
£11.99 |
Heritage Aesthetics |
Anthony Anaxagorou |
Granta Books |
Modern |
Poetry |
£10.99 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Greek Folk Songs |
Translator:Joshua Barley |
Aiora Press |
Diachronic |
Translation |
£12.99 |