The Station: Athos: Treasures and Men(Eland Classic)

The Station follows three high-spirited young men as they visit twenty monasteries on Mount Athos in 1927. They examine treasures, photograph frescoes and sketch the courtyards and those who live in them. They swim ecstatically off the sparkling, deserted beaches, climb mountains, talk and share meals with monks and transcribe these conversations with relish. For life is very different for a celibate hermit on Mount Athos. Time has no meaning: the Son of God, His Virgin Mother, the Angels and the Saints are all living creatures of flesh and blood, and the Pope is a heretic. This slim book was little short of revolutionary in its fearless championing of Greek Orthodoxy and Byzantine civilisation, reversing centuries of western prejudice. It was the first of Robert Byron's travel books, revealing the flashing wit, bravery, passion and astonishing powers of visual observation which made him such a brilliant writer. The playfully obscure title is only finally explained in his last sentence: This is the holy Mountain Athos, station of a faith where all the years have stopped.

About the Author :
Robert Byron, like his famous namesake Lord Byron (no relation), was a traveller who wrote about his travels. Both of them battled against tyranny, fell in love with Greece and died young. Byron was born 26 February 1905 in Wembley, London. He read history at Oxford, and became one of the bright young things that included Harold Acton, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford and Emerald Cunard, though these friendships never eclipsed his passion as an art-historian. His first book Europe in the Looking-Glass (1926) was followed by The Station, then The Byzantine Achievement and The Birth of Western Painting. His third travel book, First Russia, then Tibet was published in 1933, and was a prelude to his most famous work, The Road to Oxiana (1937). He was also a hard-working journalist and a passionate conservationist, founding the Georgian Group. Robert Byron drowned just two days short of his thirty-sixth birthday, when his ship was torpedoed off the north coast of Scotland in 1941. He was travelling to Persia as a war correspondent also working with wartime intelligence.

Review :
No better portrait of the Holy Mountain exists than this: nor is it likely to be surpassed in the future. Here in short is a classic. And a classic it will remain. John Julius Norwich