Celia Henderson was an English writer and traveller active in the early to mid-20th century. She spent considerable time in Cyprus, and her work is appreciated for its clarity, restraint, and genuine affection for the places and people she encountered during the final years of British colonial rule and the early days of independence.
In 1968, Henderson published Cities and Men of Cyprus, a slender and understated work of just 108 pages. Neither a guidebook nor a traditional memoir, it is part travel-study, part cultural sketch. She writes with quiet precision, letting the details speak for themselves. What lingers is her careful attention to the everyday: the bustle of market squares, the play of sunlight on ancient stones and the rhythm of village life. Black-and-white photographs scattered throughout the book are essential, like fragile memories made visible.
Among the many scenes she captures, the village cafés stand out as a particularly vivid presence, both in her writing and through the lens of the camera. Henderson explains: “Coffee-shop" is a misleading word in English, since it is the generic term used in conversation for the smaller types of cafe which sell local wine, brandy and beer as well as coffee and soft drinks, and are an important feature of Cyprus life, particularly in the villages. In the rural areas, where there is some unemployment and under-employment, and in parts of the towns, the coffee-shops are the male centres of social and political gossip. Here the newspapers are read and discussed, local issues are mulled over […]”
In passages like this, where observation deepens into understanding, the book moves across broad themes: its ancient and medieval past, the complexity of its people, the contrasting lives of Greek and Turkish Cypriots and the richness of festivals and customs. Among the most vivid are Henderson’s descriptions of village fairs, which she captures with particular warmth and detail: “Village ‘fairs’ for instance, are an important feature of Cypriot life—held on the saint’s day of the church concerned. On these days the village has a ‘fair’ with stalls, like a market set up around the church, selling everything from sheep to bootlaces and every kind of fruit and sweet ever made in Cyprus. In the bigger villages, despite the kebab stalls, families bring their own meat and light a fire under the trees to roast it. There they camp, playing violins or guitars and dancing most of the night and next day set off for home with their cars (or donkeys) decorated with bay leaves or sprays of thyme, rosemary or whatever herbs were growing round them at the fair. There are town fairs too, like Cataclysmos, at Whitsun, and the carnival on the eve of Lent, with processions and floats and masks and dancing, and the ballad singers, singing ancient and modern epics of heroism, as they probably did at the festivals of Aphrodite and certainly in the Homeric age.”
Through scenes such as this, Henderson evoked the rise of tourism and the shifting tone of a Cyprus adapting to new rhythms, as tradition lingered and change gradually took hold. Hers is a portrait of a Cyprus poised between past and future, one observed with the patience of someone who took the time to look closely and listen deeply. As she writes, “Here, as in any other country in the world, it is only through knowledge of the people on their own ground that the country comes alive.”
You can find this book, and many more, in the Research Centre of the CVAR.
The 'Book Of The Month' series is made possible with the support of The Hellenic Initiative Canada.
