The Art of Exile
From Milton to Modernists, the lure of the sun and a more vibrant lifestyle have drawn centuries of British men and women to start anew under Sistine Chapel-coloured Mediterranean skies. But what awaits the traveller once the passport has been handed back by the bored customs officer? What lies beyond the picture postcard illusions? What happens to the lavender fields and olive groves in autumn? Is the soul’s winter any warmer at a different latitude? What happens to the solitary heart when the sun goes down in unfamiliar Southern skies? –
Automotive horsepower may have replaced horse-drawn carriages, but the challenges lying in wait for the modern exile crossing the border into the foreign terrain of the soul remain timeless and dangerous. ‘The Art of Exile’ thus charts a new map of an antique interior landscape wherein relationships are strained to breaking-point and stunning realisations are born of intense solitude. So, too, the challenging beauties of Latin culture – at once so familiar and unknowable – are drawn in stark and starling new detail. ‘The Art of Exile is for anyone who ever looked out of a Northern window towards the South and dreamed fatally ‘What if….’
