'These islands are really heavenly when the weather allows,” wrote Lawrence Durrell about Rhodes in 1946 when he was stationed in the Dodecanese for the British Ministry of Information. “One wants to undress and climb trees.”
I was more interested in unpacking my memory. I first went to Rhodes back in August 1977, aged 11, on a family holiday. It was my first time on a plane (Olympic Airlines, sitting in the same row as the actor Michael Crawford, who was playing the hapless Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em).
