Mini Cultural Escape to the Med

MOVIES
Les Choristes (FRANCE)
Set in postwar France, Les Choristes (The Choir) tells the story of a failed musician, Clément Mathieu who takes up a teaching job at a boarding school for young boys. When he arrives, there is constant disarray and friction between the students and teachers. Mathieu seeks to enlighten the troubled youngsters through the avenue of music. He forms a choir and little by little, the positive effects begin to show.

Il Postino (ITALY)
A film that keeps you bewitched until the credits roll in. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda arrives on the island of Procida having been exiled from his homeland. He begins to form a bond with his postman, Mario, who launches himself into the world of poetry. When Mario falls in love with the beautiful barwoman, Beatrice, Neruda assists him in wooing her by weaving words. Against the spectacular backdrop of land and sea, friendship and love evolve and endure.

Troy (GREECE)
With Gladiator II soon to be released, its time to dig through the archives of earlier war epics. Troy tells the story of the woman who launched a thousand ships. Helen of Sparta, married to Menelaus, is abducted by the prince Paris of Troy who loves her. The enraged Menelaus declares war on Troy, the most savage that the ancient world had ever seen. The plot is driven by the egos of its protagonists; Their pride and desire for greatness fuels their individual missions. 

BOOKS
The song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
Achilles’ name has travelled through history, and he remains one of the greatest heroes from ancient mythology. Madeline Miller tells his story through the eyes of Patroclus, his best friend and eventual lover. Patroclus watches Achilles grow from a boy to a man and stays his most loyal companion. As Achilles is destined for war, Patroclus must accept that greater powers will govern their paths but the bond between the two young men is immortal.

A House in Sicily – Daphne Phelps
A memoir of an Englishwoman who inherits a house from her uncle in Taormina. Daphne tells her story of arriving at Casa Cuseni as a young woman without knowing a word of Italian or how to navigate the country’s bureaucracy. Through the help of the locals , she transforms her crumbling home into a bohemian sanctuary making ends meet by renting rooms to tourists. In the decades that Daphne ran Casa Cuseni, she welcomed the likes of Picasso, Greta Garbo, Henry Faulkner and many more famous names.
The house can still be visited today doubling as a museum as well as a hotel.

My Family and Other Animals – Lawrence Durrell
The Durrells became one of the most popular television programmes to showcase the beauty and romance of Greece. Not everyone knows however, that it was based on a trilogy of memoirs by the real-life Gerald Durrell. His family moved to Corfu from England in the 1930s and made the island their home for four years. Their wild lives are as vivid in Durrell’s pages as they are on the screen and it is worth reading his heartwarming accounts that capture the eccentricities of his Grecian world.