Set over 40 years against the backdrop of the most romantic story-filled villa in Crete, The Villa Ariadne is the tale of three of the most charismatic British Hellenophiles since Lord Byron

The Villa Ariadne stands above the Minoan ruins of Knossos in Crete, a memorial to the British archaeologists who built, lived and worked there. Dilys Powell brings to life the autocratic founder Arthur Evans and his successor John Pendlebury, whose heroic leadership of the local defence against German invasion in 1941 made him a legend. The villa was also the site of the daring kidnap of German General Kreipe by special operations officers, including Patrick Leigh Fermor, in 1944. But The Villa Ariadne is far more than just their story. Uniting ancient myths and history with first-hand observation and tales she is told, Dilys Powell leaves us a complex portrait of the island as a whole - a place she knew and loved for forty years. With a biographical afterword by Rupert Smith