The end of timelessness? Islomania, radio and the awakening of Lawrence Durrell

This article returns to the life and work of a writer who was once much-lauded in the Anglo-Greek tradition: Lawrence Durrell. It does so with a view to reassessing the repeated expression in Durrell’s writing of a particular fantasy – the philosophy of ‘islomania’, a madness for island life – and to gauging the impact on this fantasy of radio culture. The article deals in depth with Durrell’s official island books – Prospero’s Cell (1945), Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953) and Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957) – and interpolates discussion of these with re-readings of his early novels: namely, Panic Spring (1937), The Black Book (1938) and The Dark Labyrinth (1947). As well as seeking to evaluate Durrell’s fascination with insular Greece, both as tourist, settler and government employee, the article makes a new case for contextualizing his composition of Bitter Lemons in relation to his work at the BBC, upon his return to Britain in 1956.