Passing Thyme is an account of the two decades Gordon Coxhill has spent on the Aegean island of Syros, ostensibly teaching but in reality learning more than he ever taught. He has travelled widely within Greece and his mishaps on the road provide a light counterpoint to the untimely deaths of too many of his companions. In the 1960s and 70s, he was a pop music journalist in London, and interviewed many of the biggest stars of the day, but it is the years basking in philoxenia warmer even than a Greek summer that have proved the more formative.
In its encounters with fat soup and chewing gum liqueur, language and folklore, people and places, of emergency wards on the roof and spitting at babies, Passing Thyme is a book full of discoveries, yet it is the author’s discovery of himself that remains at its core.
In its encounters with fat soup and chewing gum liqueur, language and folklore, people and places, of emergency wards on the roof and spitting at babies, Passing Thyme is a book full of discoveries, yet it is the author’s discovery of himself that remains at its core.
