A Thing of Beauty : Travels in Mythical and Modern Greece

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Year

Longlisted for the Anglo-hellenic League Runciman Award 2022

‘Peter Fiennes’s road trip around Greece [is] engagingly described’ Mary Beard, TLS

‘Fiennes is a brilliant and generous guide through Greece’ Observer

‘A wonderful… really profound meditation on what it means to hope… a gorgeous excursion into Greece and across the centuries on an environmental quest’ BBC Radio 4 Open Book Book of the Year choice by Anita Roy

What do the Greek myths mean to us today?

It’s now a golden age for these tales – they crop up in novels, films and popular culture. But what’s the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for children? And what’s to be seen now at the places where heroes fought and gods once quarrelled?

Peter Fiennes travels to the sites of some of the most famous Greek myths, on the trail of hope, beauty and a new way of seeing what we have done to our world. Fiennes walks through landscapes – stunning and spoiled – on the trail of dancing activists and Arcadian shepherds, finds the ‘most beautiful beach in Greece’, consults the Oracle, and loses himself in the cities, remote villages and ruins of this storied land.

About the Author

Peter Fiennes is the author of the critically acclaimed Footnotes, Oak and Ash and Thorn, and To War with God. As the publisher for Time Out, he nurtured a lifelong obsession with old guidebooks, creating award-winning city guides, walking books and titles about Britain’s countryside and seaside. He lives in south-west London.