The castaway : Three great men ruined in one year—a king, a cad and a castaway

A young British lord, fresh from the corridors of the House of Lords, awakens on a silent, windswept beach in the Ionian Sea. With only a goat‑skin blanket, a loyal English companion, and a handful of sketches, he steps into a world of rust‑colored cliffs, olive groves and the lingering echo of Ramadan celebrations. The landscape teems with Suliote warriors, rust‑banded pistols and the omnipresent tension between conquered Greeks and their Ottoman rulers. As he swims beneath a sunrise‑splashed sky, his mind races between the poetry he drafts on a makeshift desk and the restless yearning for a nation he barely knows.

In the shade of ancient ruins, he records verses that fuse his own yearning with the battered spirit of a people longing for freedom. His wandering brings him into contact with a disillusioned king, a reckless cadet and, of course, his own precarious fate as a castaway. Together their stories unfold against the backdrop of a land caught between past glory and present oppression, hinting at the personal and political upheavals that will shape the coming year.