Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936) was the outstanding Greek statesman of the first half of the twentieth century. Michael Llewellyn-Smith traces his early years, political apprenticeship in Crete, and energetic role in that island's emancipation from both Ottoman rule and the arbitrary rule of Prince George of Greece. Summoned to Athens in 1910 by a cabal of officers, Venizelos mastered the Greek political scene, sent the military back to barracks, and led the country through a glorious period of constitutional and political reform, ending in a Balkan alliance waging successful war against Ottoman rule in Europe. By 1914, Greece had doubled in territory and population, and was about to face the challenges of European war. Tensions were rising between the king and the prime minister, foreshadowing political schism. This book illuminates Venizelos' political mastery, liberalism and nationalism, and traces his fateful friendship with David Lloyd George. A second volume will complete his story, with the Great War, the post-war peace settlement, Greece's Asia Minor disaster, and Venizelos' late years of renewed prime ministerial office, political polarisation and exile in Paris.

Michael Llewellyn-Smith sets the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the war in Anatolia against the background of Greece's 'Great Idea' and of great power rivalries in the Near East. He traces the origins of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos's 'Ionian Vision' to his joint conception with David Lloyd George of an Anglo-Greek entente in the Eastern Mediterranean. This narrative text presents a comprehensive account of the disaster which has shaped the politics and society of modern Greece.

The 'Macedonian question' has been much studied in recent years as has the political history of the period from the Balkan Wars in 1912-13 to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. But for a variety of reasons, connected with the political division of Greece and the involvement of outside powers, the events at and behind the Macedonian front have been side-lined. The recent commemorations of the centenary of the end of the First World War in the UK illustrate how by comparison with the enormous and moving emphasis on the western front, Macedonia has been not wholly but largely ignored. This volume illuminates this comparatively neglected period of Greek history and examines the strategic and military aspects of the war in Macedonia and the political, social, economic and cultural context of the war.

Published in the year that the Olympics return to Athens is the illuminating story of the making of the modern games.