This is just not the place you’d anticipate an article about one of many Mediterranean’s most lovely islands to begin. It’s the tail finish of winter, 2021. Kensal Inexperienced Cemetery in west London: the imperial mausolea canted and crumbling, low clouds dissolving into rain. We’re nonetheless in that unusual section of the pandemic after we are masked, newly conscious of our our bodies and the area round them. We’re right here to bury Nikos, a person who for me, for a lot of, was the incarnation of Corfu.
I had spent my 20s looking for the proper Greek island, hopping from the well-trodden (Mykonos, Santorini, Cephalonia) to the extra obscure (Kythira, Symi, Meganisi). None fairly matched the imaginative and prescient I had dreamed into being as a toddler, once I segued from Robert Graves to Mary Renault, then to Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles. Greece was an thought earlier than it was a place: freedom and deep thought, a constellation of sand, salt and thyme.
Then, on a whim, I accepted an invite to play cricket in Corfu.
I knew little concerning the island on the time – not about its strategic historical past, nor how that place had formed a tradition that’s directly Greek, Venetian and British. I hadn’t but walked the Liston, the elegant colonnaded arcade that is likely to be Venice or Trieste, Bologna or Perugia have been it not for the cricket pitch specified by entrance of it. The pitch is surrounded by a parking lot; its groundsmen battle warmth, salt spray, digging youngsters and fouling canine. But it stays the one cricket pitch on the planet I know that’s set inside a Unesco world heritage web site. Taking guard there, you look as much as the Previous Fortress for solidity, and to the Palace of St Michael and St George for class and aptitude.
I went out with the Lord’s Taverners, a UK sports activities charity staff. We have been a motley bunch: a few former internationals – Andy Caddick and Chris Cowdrey – some actors, entertainers and a handful of writers, together with me. The Corfiots, it turned out, have been superb at cricket. The Greek nationwide staff is drawn nearly totally from the island. We have been soundly crushed, then consoled by heat, generosity and a run of fantastic dinners within the Previous City.
It was over a kind of dinners – on the Pergola – that I met Nikos Louvros and his spouse, Annabelle, our hosts and the founders of Cricket Corfu. Nikos was rambunctiously Greek, full of untamed vitality; Annabelle was English in that exact means that falls deeply for Greece and builds a life round it. I recognised the impulse. By the top of the meal of lamb, ouzo and wonderful native wine, we had deliberate our future collectively: we might launch a literary competition.
Over the next years, that imaginative and prescient has taken superb form. Corfu literary competition started modestly: at our first, in 2017, there have been as many audio system on stage as there have been individuals within the viewers. I bear in mind Nikos’s hope, irritation and eventually, characteristically, laughter as invited visitors failed to indicate up. However there was by no means any sense it could cease. With Nikos beside you, every thing appeared potential.
Slowly, buoyed by native assist, the competition grew into one thing far bigger than we had imagined. We’ve had Stephen Fry and Sebastian Faulks, Bettany Hughes and Natalie Haynes, Matt Haig and Tom Holland. They got here and spoke, they stayed on the heavenly Kontokali Bay resort, or within the villas and residences of Ionian Estates, and so they fell in love with Corfu as I had. Many have come again to talk a number of occasions.
Nikos lived for this – for exhibiting others the wonder and drama of the island on which he was born, then left and returned to. He’s gone now, however the competition endures. This September, it’s going to return, bigger and extra magical than ever, with Homer’s Odyssey at its coronary heart – a becoming topic for an island the place the mythic and the on a regular basis nonetheless fold into one another with ease.
That is what I discovered from Nikos, and from Corfu, over time: swim early, earlier than the day warms and when the water nonetheless has a faint chunk. Swim after lunch, when the ocean feels silky. Swim at nightfall, when the floor holds the day’s warmth and the sunshine turns into thick and gradual. Corfu is giant sufficient and various sufficient that you may construct a complete itinerary round water and by no means really feel you’re repeating your self.
On the west coast, Myrtiotissa stays the seashore that feels closest to a non-public miracle. Set in a steep inexperienced cradle, it’s an initiation to achieve it. Not unreasonably, Durrell referred to as it “maybe essentially the most lovely seashore in the world”.
Paleokastritsa possesses a distinct form of magnificence. The monastery above the bay appears to be like down over a scatter of coves the place the water is so clear you’ll be able to see the rocks far beneath, like a second panorama suspended in blue.
Then there’s the north-east, which has calmer waters, protected coves, a extra intimate shoreline. Agni Bay is a mild curve of shoreline made for lengthy lunches. Agni Taverna sits shut sufficient to the water that you may go away your desk, swim and return nonetheless tasting salt. Eat fish, eat merely, let time loosen its grip. For those who can, arrive by boat: the north-east coast has a convention of taking water taxis between bays, and there’s something unmistakably Corfiot about stepping straight from deck to lunch.
A shock – particularly in case your picture of Greek islands is Cycladic sparseness – is how inexperienced Corfu is. The inside rises and folds like a small nation. Olive groves run for miles; cypresses spike the skyline. Drive up into the villages above Paleokastritsa and also you attain Lakones, perched excessive sufficient to make the island really feel out of the blue huge. At Boulis, the meals is nice, but it surely’s the terrace view you come for, the sense of stepping straight into the blue horizon.
Corfu’s delicacies is just not what you normally consider as Greek: formed by Venetian affect, by centuries of contact with Italy and by produce from the island’s land and sea. Pastitsada is a beef stew with pasta; sofrito is beef or veal slices braised in a sauce of white wine, vinegar, garlic and parsley; bourdeto is fish stew.
In Corfu City, find time for a evening at Salto – up to date however grounded, with wonderful substances and an excellent wine record. Then go for ice-cream at Papagiorgios. Stroll the Previous City with a cone in hand, the stone nonetheless heat, and you are feeling a part of a lengthy custom of summer time nights.
In 2020, in a short, inconceivable lull between Covid lockdowns, we held the competition as if it have been an act of defiance in opposition to the gods. The world was half closed; plans modified by the hour. But, for a number of days, the island opened its arms and allow us to in. Chairs have been spaced out, masks slipped on and off, hand sanitisers have been perched on each desk – and nonetheless there was laughter, concepts, magnificence. Issues that made us really feel human.
One morning, Nikos appeared with a ship. He had a present for that – arriving as if from nowhere, already midway into the following thought. “Come,” he mentioned. A dozen of us climbed aboard and pulled away from the city, abandoning the anxious information cycle and the low-level concern of that yr. We ran alongside the north-east coast, reducing the engine in inlets you’d by no means discover from land: slivers of shingle, limestone cabinets, seashores no greater than sofas. Every time we stopped, we swam as if attempting to slough the yr off our pores and skin. I felt like freedom, one thing snatched from darkness.
That was the final competition Nikos attended. He died of Covid the next January – on my birthday.
After I consider Nikos now, I consider that day on the water: of pleasure underneath stress, of how valuable it turns into. When he died, the island felt altered – not much less lovely, however extra charged, as if the sunshine carried grief in waves. But, Corfu additionally teaches one thing: that love for a spot can outlive the one that introduced you there, and change into a means of honouring them.
I’ve tried to do this in my very own means, too. My novel A Stranger in Corfu is devoted to Nikos. It grew out of this island – its layered previous, its ambiance of secrecy and hospitality, the sense that tales cling to the land. The novel is, at coronary heart, a love letter: an try to pay correct consideration to a place that has given me greater than I can simply title.
Go to Corfu and don’t hurry. Swim usually. Drive into the hills. Eat as if time have been a present. Let the island reveal itself at its personal tempo – slowly, then unexpectedly.
And if, sooner or later, somebody seems with a ship and an thought, say sure.
A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston is revealed by Canongate (£18.99). To assist the Guardian purchase a duplicate at guardianbookshop.com. Supply expenses might apply. The 2026 Corfu literary competition runs from 21-27 September
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