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legitimacy of British Hellenic holdings in the British Museum and the Elgin Marbles is hardly reactionary and points to the irony in his political positions as well as his express disputation with British colonialism. It is equally difficult to read Durrell’s full comments as pro-imperial. Moreover, this comment was made at the height of the administration of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1987, and it discusses Durrell’s experiences during Sir Anthony Eden’s and Harold Macmillan’s Conservative governments in 1957 (which explains the fluctuations between present and past tenses in Durrell’s language above). The interpretive simplicity that Papayanis finds would now seem deeply blurred. The trouble for the reader here is how to hold in creative tension, perhaps even a defining tension, Durrell’s lengthy anti-authoritarian ties and anti-Marxist beliefs, both of which seem to have a significant role in the aesthetic structure of his works, in conjunction with his service to the British government. Durrell’s comments remained measured even after he was redefined as a British non-patrial without the right to enter or settle in Britain without a visa, a fact that “thickens” this tension. Moreover, we must ask whether or not the existing political interpretations of Durrell’s works are sufficient for the breadth of this creative tension.
    This problem surfaces again in Durrell’s travel narrative of Yugoslavia, “Family Portrait,” as well as in his discussions of Sadat-era Egypt and the communist experiences of his friend Gostan Zarian. All three pieces adamantly reject Marxist forms of government that arose from Soviet Russia as well as Soviet influences abroad. They also postdate Durrell’s last publications among the anarchist presses and periodicals. However, in all three, Durrell’s vision returns to the village, everyday life, the materials of rural living, and resistance to exploitative labour and class. It is surprising to find an anti-Marxist position adopted that nonetheless questions rural–urban tensions and the transformation of traditional ways of life by the introduction of technology and new forms of organization—both quintessential Marxists areas of attention. To be more exact, it is only if we fail to account for Durrell’s previous anti-authoritarian affiliations and quietist interests that his rustic, utopian anti-Marxism is surprising. This combination has confused much previous scholarship, which either casts Durrell as a reactionary Tory or as an elitist artist without regard for the conditions of labour and life. Both are oversimplifications that this collection aims to trouble.
    Durrell’s only expressly political musings in this collection appear in “No Clue to Living,” in which he was invited to consider the role of the artist in contemporary society. Juxtaposed against the activist and formerly communist authors in the series of articles organized by Stephen Spender, Durrell’s stance that the public ought to form its own individual opinions without relying on the authority of artists, politicians, or other figureheads is shockingly anti-authoritarian in the comparison. In contrast to the earnest protestations of the other authors involved in the project, Durrell contends, “it is very doubtful whether [the artist] has anything to say which could be more original than the other pronouncements by public figures, for apart from his art he is just an ordinary fellow like everyone else, subject to the same bloody flux of rash opinion” (this volume 37–38). The phrase, “he is just an ordinary fellow like everyone else” is the leveling force that puts the reading public on par with presidents and popes (37), and to which a poet dare not lecture or opinionate. The poet clearly retains opinions but his public is taught self-reliance without relying on opinionated poets