By the 1950s the British administration and the British Government in England were faced with the Greek community’s agitation and constant demand for union with Greece. Straightforward political plans were put forth aiming at segregating the island’s two communities and using both Greeks and Turks, as the case may be, to the benefit of British plans.
The Cyprus Review, a monthly magazine, which included a section on art and was edited by Lawrence Durrell in the years 1954- 1955, followed political directives. Rosemary Grimble, Fay Nind and Dorine Van Oyen were regular suppliers of sketches on the Cypriot population, ethnography and landscape, whose work was used to accompany articles segregating the two communities. Adrian Seligman was one of the many authors. The choice of publication remained with Durrell. Years later, in 1987, while being interviewed by the Aegean Review, Durrell would admit that “the disgusting situation in Cyprus was entirely engineered by us” accepting his role in “our double-facedness in politics”. The Cyprus Review closed down in March 1956 while the violent troubles in Cyprus were hardly conducive for peregrinating artists.
The ‘Did You Know’ series is made possible with the support of OPAP (Cyprus) and the Active Citizens Fund.
