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The Station: Athos: Treasures and Men
At only 22 years of age, the author of the acclaimed Road to Oxiana traveled with his friends for the first time to Mount Athos in Greece. The eye-opening visit inspired a classic appraisal of its treasures and men--one that immediately established Byron as a major new talent. A deep love for Byzantine civilization and reverence for antiquity glow from every page. "It is a volume that will bear reading again and again"--Daily Telegraph.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1928
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About the author
Robert Byron
39 books46 followersRobert Byron was an English travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.
Byron was born in 1905, and educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford. He died in 1941, during the Second World War, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt.
Byron's The Road to Oxiana is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. It is an account of Byron's ten-month journey to Persia and Afghanistan in 1933-34 in the company of Christopher Sykes. Byron had previously travelled to widely different places; Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, Tibet. However it was in Persia and Afghanistan that he found the subject round which he forged his style of modern travel writing, when he later came to write up his account in Peking, his temporary home.
Writer Paul Fussell wrote in his 1982 book Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between The Wars that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." Travel writer Bruce Chatwin has described the book as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," and carried his copy "spineless and floodstained" on four journeys through central Asia.
However, in his day, Byron's travel books were outsold by those of writers Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh.
An appreciation of architecture is a strong element in Byron's writings and he was a forceful advocate for the preservation of historic buildings, and was a founder member of the Georgian Group. A philhellene, he was also amongst the pioneers in a reinterest in Byzantine History.
He attended the last Nuremberg Rally, in 1938, with Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Byron knew her through his friendship with her sister Nancy Mitford, but he was an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. He died aged 35 in 1941 after his ship, the SS Jonathan Holt, was torpedoed by a u-boat in the North Atlantic.
Byron was born in 1905, and educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford. He died in 1941, during the Second World War, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt.
Byron's The Road to Oxiana is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. It is an account of Byron's ten-month journey to Persia and Afghanistan in 1933-34 in the company of Christopher Sykes. Byron had previously travelled to widely different places; Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, Tibet. However it was in Persia and Afghanistan that he found the subject round which he forged his style of modern travel writing, when he later came to write up his account in Peking, his temporary home.
Writer Paul Fussell wrote in his 1982 book Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between The Wars that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." Travel writer Bruce Chatwin has described the book as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," and carried his copy "spineless and floodstained" on four journeys through central Asia.
However, in his day, Byron's travel books were outsold by those of writers Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh.
An appreciation of architecture is a strong element in Byron's writings and he was a forceful advocate for the preservation of historic buildings, and was a founder member of the Georgian Group. A philhellene, he was also amongst the pioneers in a reinterest in Byzantine History.
He attended the last Nuremberg Rally, in 1938, with Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Byron knew her through his friendship with her sister Nancy Mitford, but he was an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. He died aged 35 in 1941 after his ship, the SS Jonathan Holt, was torpedoed by a u-boat in the North Atlantic.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 10, 2013
Byron: Travel writing that's not quite travel writing.
More like white man's prerogative ; travels thru the time of the late 20s in search of "eicons", frescoes, monastic doo-dahs, roaming from monastery to monastery astride mules (so much muleteering here) subsisting on tinned sardines and ouzo and cataloguing with curious preciseness the exact number of bed bugs one squished in the night, before splashing down the sea to bathe with ones chums. Merry japes, what?
Wither and thither goes Byron, and sometimes I'm not sure his little lapses into a prose so purple it's almost Tyrian, are self parodying, consciously sardonic or just the product of a very young Oxbridge educated youth (Byron was 22 when he went to Athos): the weight of emotion given over to weight of words.
Having said all this, there are some beautiful descriptions of the island of Athos here. Byron writes with a painterly eye because his background is paint, fresco, the Byzantine, which investigation forms the quixotic goal for his coterie of startlingly educated quintessential englishmen abroad.
The book is tribute and threnody to a past threatened even then by the present. Byron's project to show the communities on Athos in stasis, held together by religious passion, monasticism idiorhythmic and cenobitic, the veneration of icons, services in one thousand year old churches, the chants of kyrie eleison riding from the supplicants to the rafters, where the eyes of their forefathers glint down in the shadows upon the devout as the eye of God watches from above, beyond, near, far - at which point is where Bryon and co usually barge in, plate camera in hand trying to get their relic money shots (two hour exposures min, rickety ladders, a team of bustling monks needed, an angry monk muttering oaths at foot of ladder) and if not forthcoming they importune the head monk for access to stuff no non-monk has seen for, like 900 years, at which point said monk says he has to ask his boss upstairs (not not Him upstairs but him upstairs; another monk higher up the narrowing chain of monastic baddassery than he,) but maybe tomorrow but maybe not because everyone is needed to stomp grapes tomorrow (EVERYONE, yes even 80 year old toothless Aristarchus who probably pees in the mix) so don't call us we'll call you, yeah? at which point ding dong it's dinner time and the three or foursome take seats, chew down some octopus or bread with fixed "thank-you" grins get told to keep drinking ouzo until they approach total inevriation, before its time to retire to their cells for patchy sleep, afrighted by crickets, the noises of your English cell mate attempting to digest his meal, the crashing of shutters, the tickle of said bedbugs, and the mysterious thrum of chanting from midnight mass. Because hey, it is a monastery after all.
Thence comes morning, rosy fingered etc, breakfast of simple barfworthy fare, and we see Rob literally often scramble of all fours, skeetering down ravines and through briar, falling off mules, not taking enough water to sustain sensible homeostasis, hurt his ankles, his pride, his English stiff upper and decorum, all in his quest to sketch some edifice, to stand, stout Cortez like upon a peak in Greece, gazing at the azure, cerulean, faience of the Adriatic, whence Theseus, Odysseus, and all those other argonauts once sailed, and more pertinent to Bryon and the Athasian monks, whence trouble, invasion, relic hunters, always threatened from, their covetous hands wanting treasures untold. History is never far away here.
The quest was to photograph a lot of frescoes and religious objects. I think they partly succeeded. Even to the day I think some stuff remains unrecorded by the evil eye of camera and film. I looked on google to see what Pulcheria's Cup looked like, and only got a modelmayhem.com page (username: pulcheria, cupsize: B. Diverting enough, but not quite what I was looking for.)
So theres a lot about religious knick-knacks. But make no mistake: if panegyrics to the Byzantine, dithyrambs provoked by frescoes, shudders of delight that comes from viewing 1000 year old iconostasis don't sound like your thing, The Station is still worth your time. Its informative, rightly celebrating the sad case of the Eastern Roman Empire and its artistic and religious products, and giving a look into a world seen even then as almost coelacanthic, a living fossil of an existence. God know how it is today.
Me, I liked it.
IN FIVE WORDS:
Interesting japes photographing monastic life.
More like white man's prerogative ; travels thru the time of the late 20s in search of "eicons", frescoes, monastic doo-dahs, roaming from monastery to monastery astride mules (so much muleteering here) subsisting on tinned sardines and ouzo and cataloguing with curious preciseness the exact number of bed bugs one squished in the night, before splashing down the sea to bathe with ones chums. Merry japes, what?
Wither and thither goes Byron, and sometimes I'm not sure his little lapses into a prose so purple it's almost Tyrian, are self parodying, consciously sardonic or just the product of a very young Oxbridge educated youth (Byron was 22 when he went to Athos): the weight of emotion given over to weight of words.
Having said all this, there are some beautiful descriptions of the island of Athos here. Byron writes with a painterly eye because his background is paint, fresco, the Byzantine, which investigation forms the quixotic goal for his coterie of startlingly educated quintessential englishmen abroad.
The book is tribute and threnody to a past threatened even then by the present. Byron's project to show the communities on Athos in stasis, held together by religious passion, monasticism idiorhythmic and cenobitic, the veneration of icons, services in one thousand year old churches, the chants of kyrie eleison riding from the supplicants to the rafters, where the eyes of their forefathers glint down in the shadows upon the devout as the eye of God watches from above, beyond, near, far - at which point is where Bryon and co usually barge in, plate camera in hand trying to get their relic money shots (two hour exposures min, rickety ladders, a team of bustling monks needed, an angry monk muttering oaths at foot of ladder) and if not forthcoming they importune the head monk for access to stuff no non-monk has seen for, like 900 years, at which point said monk says he has to ask his boss upstairs (not not Him upstairs but him upstairs; another monk higher up the narrowing chain of monastic baddassery than he,) but maybe tomorrow but maybe not because everyone is needed to stomp grapes tomorrow (EVERYONE, yes even 80 year old toothless Aristarchus who probably pees in the mix) so don't call us we'll call you, yeah? at which point ding dong it's dinner time and the three or foursome take seats, chew down some octopus or bread with fixed "thank-you" grins get told to keep drinking ouzo until they approach total inevriation, before its time to retire to their cells for patchy sleep, afrighted by crickets, the noises of your English cell mate attempting to digest his meal, the crashing of shutters, the tickle of said bedbugs, and the mysterious thrum of chanting from midnight mass. Because hey, it is a monastery after all.
Thence comes morning, rosy fingered etc, breakfast of simple barfworthy fare, and we see Rob literally often scramble of all fours, skeetering down ravines and through briar, falling off mules, not taking enough water to sustain sensible homeostasis, hurt his ankles, his pride, his English stiff upper and decorum, all in his quest to sketch some edifice, to stand, stout Cortez like upon a peak in Greece, gazing at the azure, cerulean, faience of the Adriatic, whence Theseus, Odysseus, and all those other argonauts once sailed, and more pertinent to Bryon and the Athasian monks, whence trouble, invasion, relic hunters, always threatened from, their covetous hands wanting treasures untold. History is never far away here.
The quest was to photograph a lot of frescoes and religious objects. I think they partly succeeded. Even to the day I think some stuff remains unrecorded by the evil eye of camera and film. I looked on google to see what Pulcheria's Cup looked like, and only got a modelmayhem.com page (username: pulcheria, cupsize: B. Diverting enough, but not quite what I was looking for.)
So theres a lot about religious knick-knacks. But make no mistake: if panegyrics to the Byzantine, dithyrambs provoked by frescoes, shudders of delight that comes from viewing 1000 year old iconostasis don't sound like your thing, The Station is still worth your time. Its informative, rightly celebrating the sad case of the Eastern Roman Empire and its artistic and religious products, and giving a look into a world seen even then as almost coelacanthic, a living fossil of an existence. God know how it is today.
Me, I liked it.
IN FIVE WORDS:
Interesting japes photographing monastic life.
February 7, 2025
Greece has been the origin of many things that we take for granted now; democracy, philosophy and rational thought are some of them. The culture and people have persisted from ancient times until the modern day, though they have reinvented themselves time and time again. Its wider influence on other cultures was totally undervalued until this slim book by Robert Byron.
At its heart it is a travel book, there are accounts of the places they go to, the people that they meet and the things that they experience on Mount Athos. But this is also far more than travel writing
As the forty miles stretch out, only a shadow in the haze remains, outlined in the silver gleams of the farther sea; spreading then to a farther shadow – the mainland.
In here Byron celebrate the uniqueness of Greek Orthodoxy, the remoteness of the monasteries and describes the characters that he meets that have chosen a spiritual life over a more secular existence. Him and his fellow travellers are really privileged to be able to do this and take photos of these places that were rarely seen by outsiders.
David and Mark are the companions that are with him on this trip, and they are fortunate to also to get to see some of the religious relics that the monasteries are custodians for. Byron is a sharp observer of the landscapes that they travel through, recounting details that most people wouldn’t ever notice. He describes the meals that they have in such a way hat it made me a little hungry when reading it.
All along above the twining river floats a verdian haze. Far away rise the parallel hills, deepest sapphire, sweeping high and regular as far as the eye can see, with the black and white clouds rolling up, and their shadows like foreign armies traversing the plain. In all lurks the colour of light, of the fire of the earth, burning in watered leaf and sodden plough, catching even the sounds as they run hazard through the air, this colour which Greece knows and other lands do not; and which Greeks have bought to rest, not in stone, but paint.
I really liked this book. Byron’s writing has an intensity to it at times, almost like you are being baked in the Mediterranean sun alongside him. Occasionally it felt like an information dump as he writes about a specific monastery and wants us to know all the facts he uncovered in his visit. I can forgive him for that as when he writes well it soars. I will be bumping The Road To Oxiana up the list.
At its heart it is a travel book, there are accounts of the places they go to, the people that they meet and the things that they experience on Mount Athos. But this is also far more than travel writing
As the forty miles stretch out, only a shadow in the haze remains, outlined in the silver gleams of the farther sea; spreading then to a farther shadow – the mainland.
In here Byron celebrate the uniqueness of Greek Orthodoxy, the remoteness of the monasteries and describes the characters that he meets that have chosen a spiritual life over a more secular existence. Him and his fellow travellers are really privileged to be able to do this and take photos of these places that were rarely seen by outsiders.
David and Mark are the companions that are with him on this trip, and they are fortunate to also to get to see some of the religious relics that the monasteries are custodians for. Byron is a sharp observer of the landscapes that they travel through, recounting details that most people wouldn’t ever notice. He describes the meals that they have in such a way hat it made me a little hungry when reading it.
All along above the twining river floats a verdian haze. Far away rise the parallel hills, deepest sapphire, sweeping high and regular as far as the eye can see, with the black and white clouds rolling up, and their shadows like foreign armies traversing the plain. In all lurks the colour of light, of the fire of the earth, burning in watered leaf and sodden plough, catching even the sounds as they run hazard through the air, this colour which Greece knows and other lands do not; and which Greeks have bought to rest, not in stone, but paint.
I really liked this book. Byron’s writing has an intensity to it at times, almost like you are being baked in the Mediterranean sun alongside him. Occasionally it felt like an information dump as he writes about a specific monastery and wants us to know all the facts he uncovered in his visit. I can forgive him for that as when he writes well it soars. I will be bumping The Road To Oxiana up the list.
December 27, 2018
This book is a joke by someone trying too hard to be funny.
I'm willing to give a lot of leeway to travel writing from this time period when it comes to writing style. In A Time of Gifts or The Way of the World, there is a marked difference between the clear and crisp and orderly writing from when they have notes of their time there and when they try to write from memory about beautiful moments in their past, filling the blanks of time lost with flowery or obfuscating or dreamlike language. My beef with Mr. Byron is his use of unnecessarily Victorian writing style to describe the most mundane of routine things. What's keeping this from being a one-star review are the rare occassions in this book when his flowery language beautifully evokes a sense of the grandeur and splendour of Byzantine art and pottery and architechture. I would suggest one to seek out authors other than Byron for those not willing to wade through paragraphs of overwritten garbage (or as Byron might say, an effluvium of literary refuse), ideally with more pictures given that the goal of their trip ostensibly was to spread knowledge of Byzantine culture through the medium of photography. Yikes!
I'm willing to give a lot of leeway to travel writing from this time period when it comes to writing style. In A Time of Gifts or The Way of the World, there is a marked difference between the clear and crisp and orderly writing from when they have notes of their time there and when they try to write from memory about beautiful moments in their past, filling the blanks of time lost with flowery or obfuscating or dreamlike language. My beef with Mr. Byron is his use of unnecessarily Victorian writing style to describe the most mundane of routine things. What's keeping this from being a one-star review are the rare occassions in this book when his flowery language beautifully evokes a sense of the grandeur and splendour of Byzantine art and pottery and architechture. I would suggest one to seek out authors other than Byron for those not willing to wade through paragraphs of overwritten garbage (or as Byron might say, an effluvium of literary refuse), ideally with more pictures given that the goal of their trip ostensibly was to spread knowledge of Byzantine culture through the medium of photography. Yikes!
October 20, 2020
Hard not to draw comparisons with another, more modern, but still overly entitled old Etonian, Boris 'corrupt clown' Johnson ... Byron, writing in the 30's after the Greek revolution (and tragic forced movements in both directions of Greeks and Turks) is able to ignore and dismiss that tragedy, in order to pursue his own agenda, showing a lack of empathy that Boris has made his own ... having recently watched the Simon Reeve programme on Athos, it is a remarkable juxtaposition to the sort of traveller Byron comes through as via his writing ... one being genuinely interested in the people, their story and the culture, one is only interested in what they can provide for him, and is ready to scream, shout and act like a hooray Henry hooligan when they feel denied what they see as their right ... Ultimately, the treasures are never fully revealed, and bar a few favoured examples, the men are derided as inferior to the type of Englishman Byron believes to be the true standard of civilisation, by which all others should be judged ... men like him (and Boris) ... spoiler, they are not.
January 20, 2025
A fine piece of travel writing from Byron, perhaps not on par with The Road to Oxiana but worth the read nonetheless. Byron is a shameless Byzantineophile (I think that's a word) and expresses his preference for the late Byzantine art of Mount Athos over the what he believes is the Romanized Byzantine art of Ravenna. He (reasonably) sees clear influences of the Byzantine and specifically the art of Athos in El Greco. His account is rich with the language of color and landscape and stone, but it manages to be earthy and human too, speaking of belching and body odor and swimming in sewage. His account of Athos cooking is brutally honest and often witty, and his take on the monks is perceptive but sympathetic.
February 17, 2019
I do really enjoy Byron— he’s prejudices and declamations are a big part of the fun. A good bit of contrast between this and Paddy Fermor a few years on. An enjoyable and quick read — not raising to his Road to Oxiana but worthwhile nonetheless.
February 5, 2023
ok. some things i didn’t know.
so there’s that.
so there’s that.
February 13, 2023
Libro clásico de viajes sobre el Monte Athos. Muy bueno.
November 23, 2014
I was about to lend my copy of The Station to a friend when I decided to refresh myself of its contents. Lo and behold, I quickly discovered that I hadn’t read Byron’s youthful essay on the Holy Mountain of Athos and its Byzantine treasures, but his later much lauded book The Road to Oxiana.
So, newly come to The Station, I plunged into Byron’s sometimes purple prose and found, as before, his humor to be sharp, witty and sardonic. While the reader might not always agree with his assessments of various styles of art and architecture (he favors the abstract functionalism of the New York skyscrapers of his day to the degeneration of the Gothic as exhibited in London’s Houses of Parliament!) his views are nevertheless informative and often colorfully stated.
Amongst the descriptions of men, the monasteries, Mt Athos itself and the various orthodox churches represented thereon, Bryon tells some wonderful anecdotes. These pepper the text unexpectedly; a warning to the reader not to skip paragraphs less one misses out on a Byronic gem.
First published in 1926, The Station is a glimpse of another age, albeit about a place that seems to exist outside of time and enjoys autonomy of government. Nevertheless, this is a true vintage travelogue bearing the hallmarks of its time and Byron’s youth (he was just 22 when he wrote it).
As such it is a window on a world long gone, but the echoes of which linger on in the machinations of governments and evolving cultures of nations who have all had a hand in the history of the fascinating anomaly that is Mt Athos.
Review by Kerry Hennigan
23 November 2014
So, newly come to The Station, I plunged into Byron’s sometimes purple prose and found, as before, his humor to be sharp, witty and sardonic. While the reader might not always agree with his assessments of various styles of art and architecture (he favors the abstract functionalism of the New York skyscrapers of his day to the degeneration of the Gothic as exhibited in London’s Houses of Parliament!) his views are nevertheless informative and often colorfully stated.
Amongst the descriptions of men, the monasteries, Mt Athos itself and the various orthodox churches represented thereon, Bryon tells some wonderful anecdotes. These pepper the text unexpectedly; a warning to the reader not to skip paragraphs less one misses out on a Byronic gem.
First published in 1926, The Station is a glimpse of another age, albeit about a place that seems to exist outside of time and enjoys autonomy of government. Nevertheless, this is a true vintage travelogue bearing the hallmarks of its time and Byron’s youth (he was just 22 when he wrote it).
As such it is a window on a world long gone, but the echoes of which linger on in the machinations of governments and evolving cultures of nations who have all had a hand in the history of the fascinating anomaly that is Mt Athos.
Review by Kerry Hennigan
23 November 2014
January 18, 2015
Nearly perfect for large chunks, but there is one significant flaw: Byron as a young man is a bit of whinger. At times, he writes about the monks in way that seems less witty than patronizing, not to say ungrateful. This is perhaps just the reflection of his youth at the time of writing.
The descriptions of life in the UK at the beginning are, perhaps surprisingly, better than those of Mount Athos itself — Byron's humour is used to better effect when writing about his own countrymen. One inevitably speculates at what Byron would have written if he'd lived as long as Patrick Leigh Fermor (the comparison is an inevitable one). It's impossible to know, of course, but since Byron's juvenilia is so very nearly perfect, one regrets his untimely death even more.
The descriptions of life in the UK at the beginning are, perhaps surprisingly, better than those of Mount Athos itself — Byron's humour is used to better effect when writing about his own countrymen. One inevitably speculates at what Byron would have written if he'd lived as long as Patrick Leigh Fermor (the comparison is an inevitable one). It's impossible to know, of course, but since Byron's juvenilia is so very nearly perfect, one regrets his untimely death even more.
December 10, 2012
I like this book better than the Road to Oxiana. I agree with Christopher Sykes that the rhythm in The Station flows more smoothly.
August 14, 2015
Lively descriptions of the persons and sites that the author encountered on his visit to Athos. Illustrated by photos and drawings by the author.
September 20, 2016
Funny and observant, and along with the Road to Oxiana an obvious lodestar of the genre. Very effected and entitled, but I think this is mainly Robert Byron teasing the reader.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews