Often compared during his lifetime to T.S. Eliot, whose work he translated and introduced to Greece, George Seferis is noted for his spare, laconic, dense and allusive verse in the Modernist idiom of the first half of the twentieth century. At once intensely Greek and a cosmopolitan of his time (he was a career-diplomat as well as a poet), Seferis better than any other writer expresses the dilemma experienced by his countrymen then and now: how to be at once Greek and modern. The translations that make up this volume are the fruit of more than forty years, and many are published here for the first time.

"Roderick Beaton grew up in Edinburgh and studied English Literature at Cambridge, before specialising in Modern Greek studies. For thirty years until his retirement he held the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at Kings College London, and is now Emeritus. Roderick is the author of several books of non-fiction, one novel, and several translations of fiction and poetry, all of them connected to Greece and the Greek-speaking world. He is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, and his books have been shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and the Cundill History Prize. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), a Fellow of Kings College (FKC), and Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic. From 2019 to 2021 he served as a member of the Committee GREECE 2021, charged by the Greek government with overseeing events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the start of the Greek Revolution in 1821. His latest book is The Greeks: A Global History, published in the USA and the UK in autumn 2021."