Albanian Letters

Sir Arthur Evans was born in 1851 and educated at Harrow School, Brasenose College, Oxford and the University of Gottingen. He is most famous for his work on the palace of Knossos in Crete, which he identified as the centre of the thriving civilisation he dubbed 'Minoan', but he was also passionately interested in the history and archaeology of the Balkans and travelled extensively in the area as the regional correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in the 1880s. From 1884 to 1908 he was Curator of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and his numerous books include The Palace of Minos, Scripta Minoa, The Adriatic Slavs and the Overland Route to Constantinople and Ancient Illyria (I.B.Tauris).

`These fascinating letters and reports – never previously collected – cast fresh light on one of the most vital periods of Albanian history. The crisis which began in the late 1870s would lead, eventually, to the creation of an independent Albania. But while the end-point of that process was a relatively simple solution, the starting-point was a complex problem, with many different interests competing for power. Arthur Evans was both an opinionated young man and a brilliant journalist, with a vivid pen and a keen appetite for information; his accounts of these tensions and conflicts, both internal and international, make him a very valuable witness – and a very good read.’ - Sir Noel Malcolm, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, `Despite their biases as pointed out by the editors, Evans' journalistic reports provide an impressive depth of detail as well as insightful analyses of events, personalities and intrigue within their cultural and historical context.’ – George W. Gawrych, Professor of History, Baylor University and author of The Crescent and the Eagle: Ottoman Rule, Islam and the Albanians (I.B.Tauris)