Below the Tide: War and Peace in Cyprus by Penelope Tremayne, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, London, 1958.
Penelope Tremayne (1921-2019) was a traveller, writer, poet, and humanitarian. She spoke several languages, worked with the Red Cross and wrote for The Times. Her journeys across Europe and the Mediterranean through Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and beyond furnished her with a distinctive perspective as both witness to and participant in the currents of history.
Below the Tide: War and Peace in Cyprus is Penelope Tremayne’s account of life on the island during the late 1950s, when she arrived through her Red Cross service. Unlike the accounts of historians or statesmen, her narrative emerges from direct personal experience. Tremayne records the human side of difficult times. The pervasive unease that infiltrated daily life, the quiet determination of families striving to maintain normalcy amid uncertainty and the resilience of people who carried on with courage.
Both a personal memoir and a witness account, the book reflects Tremayne’s dual perspective: the measured distance of an outsider alongside the intimate access her knowledge of Greek provided. Her prose carries the formal cadence of her generation, at times reserved, yet consistently marked by profound attentiveness. She notices the silence of villages at dusk, the strain that curfew imposes, and the small gestures that illuminate human endurance: neighbourly compassion, the enduring beauty of the Cypriot landscape, and the understated fortitude of ordinary lives under extraordinary strain.
Reading Below the Tide proves a sobering encounter. This is not a work of political analysis or historical interpretation, but rather an exercise in memory. Tremayne does not attempt to explicate events; instead, she bears witness to the lived reality of those who endured them. Her pages serve as a reminder that beneath every historical narrative lie the quieter stories of those who persevered.
“Inevitably during a year, I formed certain opinions; but I do not advance them as right; and I have tried in most cases not to advance them at all. I have, however, put down what I saw; and where I have given other people’s opinions, it is in all cases what they told me themselves that they thought, not what I supposed them to be thinking.”
For readers today, Tremayne’s memoir offers both a glimpse into the Cyprus of the 1950s and a meditation on the human cost of political upheaval. “[…] It is Cyprus that suffers; being in the position of the rope in the tug-of-war.” It stands as a grave yet indispensable work, one whose resonance extends far beyond its final page.
You can find this book, and many more, in the Research Center of the CVAR.
The 'Book Of The Month' series is made possible with the support of The Hellenic Initiative Canada.
