Anglo-Hellenic League

The Anglo-Hellenic League has officially opened nominations for the Runciman Award 2025, inviting publishers to submit up to seven titles each for consideration.

Ioannes Chountis, an adviser in the House of Lords and a council member of the Anglo-Hellenic League, joins Thanos Davelis to break down the recent UK election results, and look at what Keir Starmer taking over at Downing Street means for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures.

The Anglo-Hellenic League has announced the winner of this year's Runciman Award, with academic Islam Issa receiving the prestigious literary prize for "Alexandria: The City That Changed The World." 

The Runciman Award Ceremony 2024, organized by the Anglo-Hellenic League, in partnership with the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London will take place on Monday, June 17, at 7 p.m. in the Great Hall at King's College London and online via Zoom.

Anglo-Hellenism was a Liberal construct, with its roots in the 19th century, but it became recognizable as such only after the Balkan Wars. Many British Liberals were impressed by Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos at the London Conference in 1912-1913, and showed a strong desire to keep his government aligned with his British counterpart H.H. Asquith's Liberal government.

The Anglo-Hellenic League, a London-based charity dedicated to promoting friendship between the people of the UK and Greece, will donate 10,000 pounds (11,200 euros) in support of the victims of the deadly wildfires in east Attica last July.

It is said that Sir Steven Runciman fell in love with the Byzantine Empire as a young man in 1929, while on the deck of the family yacht. Looking out to Monemvasia on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese, he saw the castle town's walls and churches from afar and felt a strong affinity toward Greece.

Former UK ambassador to Athens John Kittmer has been chairing the council of Anglo-Hellenic League since early June, he said on his private blog.

"For me, the relationship between Greece and Britain, between Brits and Greeks, has been the most important intellectual passion of my life: an intellectual passion with a strong emotional component," Kittmer says in his post.