Last week I met Dimitris Papadimitriou in Manchester, and much enjoyed a brief chat (along with a slice of lemon drizzle cake).
My intention was to record a brief interview on my laptop, but we didn’t have time. Instead, we Skyped yesterday and I recorded the call. I’m afraid the result is technically imperfect, but worth sharing.
We had a very interesting chat about how his partnership with Kevin Featherstone came about, how the two of them go about co-authoring a book (this is their third), and how they approached the very time-consuming fieldwork for Prime Ministers in Greece: the Paradox of Power.
The interview comes with several caveats: we were unable to use video (thanks, Skype!) and the audio quality isn’t always perfect; Skype interrupted the call, so the interview is in two parts and the first part was brutally cut off (in between the two, I decided it was OK to address Dimitris στον ενικό); and I thought it would be good to have an interview in Greek, since the Runciman Award goes to a book about Greece or some aspect of Hellenism. But this means you will have to put up with my rather rusty Greek!
[In case you’re wondering who I am, my name is Sophie Llewellyn Smith and I’m responsible for the Runciman website. I studied Modern Greek, so talking to authors about their works relating to Greece and Hellenism is not an arduous task!]