Santorini [Bent’s Ch. 6: Monday 7th January – Wednesday 23 January 1884]
(click the play ikon below)
Travel writer and Tilos resident Jennifer Barclay first got to know the Bents a few years back when they went with her some of the way on her breezy Dodecanese travelogue Wild Abandon (Bradt Guides 2020); she wrote an article for us about the adventure too (In the Footsteps of Theodore and Mabel). Needless to say, we’re now very happy she has agreed to sail a little west from Tilos into the Cyclades to read a few of her favourite extracts from Bent’s visit to Santorini (no introduction required there, of course), where she spent a summer in the early 1990s. And if you think you can hear cicadas in the background now and then, you can; Jennifer has her window open as she reads…
Reading The Cyclades – the project
As an audiobook of The Cyclades has yet to appear, to mark its 140th anniversary (2025) we have asked ‘Cycladists’, those with affinities to the islands, to read memorable extracts from Bent’s guide for us.
The order of appearance is in accordance with how Bent sequenced them, not as the couple actually visited them – for this you need to see the diary of his wife, Mabel, for the winter of 1883/4. The dates given, where possible, of when they made their visits are from this diary – and not always reliable. The Bents’ first winter in the area, 1882/3, is unchronicled by Mabel, seeming to have been limited to a few Easter weeks, taking in Tinos and Amorgos. The diarist notes on their return to London in the Spring of 1884 that “though we like good food and beds and ease and comfort as well as others, we think the pleasure we have had quite pays for all the pains”. (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 61)
So, πάμε, click to transport yourself to the Bents’ Cyclades as they found them in 1883/4. Further reader contributions will be added, of course, as they sail in, σιγά-σιγά!