Songs of Blue and Gold: Lawrence Durrell’s Island of Corfu

by Deborah Lawrenson

By the time I reached Corfu, the season was in its last gasp.  Evening hung early over the bay when I walked the stony beach at Kalami and found the White House. It was just as he described: defiant on a rock, the sea clawing at its feet. On the headland behind, cypress trees pointed into a curdling sky. Pebbles crunched under my feet as I went closer, and waves sighed on grey stones. A brackish smell of nets and seaweed was sharp in the air.

These lines are from a fictional travel memoir in my novel Songs of Blue and Gold, but this was a real journey I had wanted to...