Runciman Award goes to two winners
Bruce Clark’s «Twice a Stranger» and Robert Holland and Diana Markides’s «The Greeks and the Hellenes» share this year’s Runciman Award. Announcing the award at the Hellenic Center in London on June 7, the chairman of the panel of judges, Professor Elizabeth Jeffreys, congratulated both authors. The judges had great pleasure in awarding the prize for books published in 2006 jointly to two excellent discussions of events in recent Greek history: Bruce Clark, «Twice a Stranger: How mass expulsion forged modern Greece and Turkey» (Granta Books) and Robert Holland and Diana Markides, «The British and the Hellenes: Struggles for mastery in the eastern Mediterranean 1850-1960» (Oxford University Press). Clark’s book, said Jeffreys, «explores the aftermath of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the mass exchange of Greek and Turkish populations that followed, one of the major events in the shaping of Greece in the 20th century: The effects live on to the present.» She praised the author for combining «meticulous archival research with sensitive presentation of personal recollections» and for writing on complex issues «with a dispassionate, humane and lucid engagement.» In «The Greeks and the Hellenes,» Jeffreys commented, «Holland and Markides deal with key moments in Anglo-Hellenic diplomatic relations in the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, covering a judiciously wide range of historical experiences.» She noted the authors’ «deep knowledge of the archival resources, combined with a wry and informed awareness of the unexpected twists that befall negotiations,» and commended «the balanced perspective and many unexpected insights in the book.» About 40 books were submitted for the 9,000-pound sterling prize, administered by the Anglo-Hellenic League and sponsored by the National Bank of Greece. Short list Also on the short list were Viccy Coltman, «Fabricating the Antique» (University of Chicago Press); Gabriel Herman, «Morality and Behavior in Democratic Athens» (Cambridge University Press); Ian Jenkins, «Greek Architecture and its Sculpture» (The British Museum Press); Adrian Lanni, «Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens» (Cambridge University Press); and Jeremy Tanner, «The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece» (Cambridge University Press). The Runciman Award, named in honor of the late Sir Steven Runciman and sponsored by the National Bank of Greece, is awarded by the Anglo-Hellenic League to a book on Greece or some aspect of the Hellenic scene. Books published in English anywhere in the world are eligible for the award. The Anglo-Hellenic League was founded in 1913 and is dedicated to Anglo-Greek understanding and friendship.
