Greek to Me: A Memoire of Academic Life by Richard Clogg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Greek to Me: A Memoire of Academic Life by Richard Clogg Thomas J. Sienkewicz Greek to Me: A Memoire of Academic Life. By Richard Clogg. London, UK and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. Pp. xi + 367. Hardback, $55.00. ISBN: 9781784539887. Paperback, $35.96. ISBN: 9781350240254. Richard Clogg, a British historian of the modern Balkans and the Black Sea region, offers a detailed account of his often-tumultuous life and long academic career, from his studies at Fettes College in Edinburgh in the late 1950s to his mandatory retirement as a Fellow at St. Anthony’s College in Oxford in 2005. His American-born wife, librarian Mary Jo Augustine, is Clogg’s constant companion in a narrative ranging from the author’s native Britain to far-flung corners of the Balkans and Turkey, remote areas of the American Pacific Northwest and Australia. Nearly every page contains memorable and often amusing anecdotes about people he met, places he visited and events in which he was observer or participant. Political intrigue, not only in international affairs but also within academia, abounds in his narrative, which is flavored by frank, unreserved and, often, biting comments about Clogg’s teachers, Greeks, members of the Greek diaspora, government officials in Britain, Greece and elsewhere and, especially, his academic colleagues, including Classicists. The 25 black-and-white illustrations depict the author, his family and significant places and events mentioned in the book. Greek to Me, arranged chronologically in seven chapters, begins with the author’s school days and his first, life-changing, visit to Greece in 1958, This trip stirred in the young Clogg a fascination with that country and a determination to learn more about its history and its people. During his undergraduate years at the University of Edinburgh, Clogg made several trips to Greece and Turkey, including one during the summer of 1960 to work on an archaeological project at the Church of Hagia Sophia in the Pontic city of Trabzon (known as Trebizond in English). Several major topics and events dominate Clogg’s account of his career. The first is the Greek military coup in April 1967. Clogg was a fellow at the British School at Athens at that turbulent time, which led him to turn his academic interests from research for a never-finished Ph.D. thesis on the Greeks of Asia Minor in the 18th and 19th centuries to a life-long focus on the contemporary politics of the Balkans and Turkey. During the seven years the junta ruled Greece, Clogg worked strenuously via BBC broadcasts and printed pieces to publicize the Colonels’ “iniquities and absurdities,” despite the British government’s attempts to maintain good relations with the Greek government. Another of Clogg’s significant interests is Greece during World War II and, especially, the role of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the Greek [End Page 477] resistance to Nazi occupation. SOE was a secret organization devoted to conducting intelligence and sabotage operations and supporting resistance efforts in countries occupied by the Axis powers. While Clogg’s official history of SOE in Greece, a career-long labor, unfortunately remains unfinished, he devotes a considerable portion of Greek to Me to publications, conferences and controversies springing from his research for this work. Of particular interest is “Greece—The Hidden War,” a 1986 documentary series on Greek resistance fighters aired on British Channel Four. While not directly involved in the actual production of this series, Clogg was deeply engaged in the ensuing and prolonged debate around the role of Greek communists in the resistance. Unquestionably the most consequential event in Clogg’s career and in this book was the publication of Politics and the Academy: Arnold Toynbee and the Koraes Chair in 1985. His account of Toynbee’s problematic tenure from 1919 to 1924 as the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History at King’s College London was, by his own admission, “washing dirty academic linen in public.” Authorship of this volume, written while Clogg was employed at King’s, proved to be one of several factors resulting in his being passed over for the same chair in 1988 and his...