Blue Skies & Black Olives: A survivor's tale of housebuilding and peacock chasing in Greece

Description

It was a moment of mad impulse when John Humphrys decided to buy a semi-derelict cottage and a building site on a plot of land overlooking the Aegean. After all, his son Christopher was already raising his family there so he would help build the beautiful villa that would soon rise there. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. John was to spend much of the next four years regretting his moment of madness. Sometimes comic, at other times infuriating, here father and son tell a story by turns hilarious and revealing about a country that intrigues and infuriates in equal measure.

John Humphrys has reported from all over the world for the BBC and presented its frontline news programmes on both radio and television, in a broadcasting career spanning forty years. He owned a dairy farm for ten years and has homes in Greece and London. Christopher Humphrys is John Humphrys' eldest son. He has lived in Greece for the past sixteen years and is a cellist with the hugely popular Camerata Orchestra based in Athens.

a very funny tome - Daily Telegraph hilarious - Daily Mail a profoundly instructive course in the idiosyncrasies of Greek law, custom and culture...entertainingly chronicled - Saga A sparky, funny, exasperated story that brings Humphrys and his family together in trying but also tender circumstances. - Iain Finlayson, Times 'John Humphrys was born to be combative... His cellist son Christopher acts as a gentle foil. Between them they amusingly blend the genres of misery memoir and Mediterranean escapist idyll - FT Weekend Entertaining - The Lady