HeyJaredRay’s Secret Crete - (secretcrete.com)
Welcome to Secret Crete - secretcrete.com I have known Crete since 1966 and write about its history, archaeology, villages, people, forgotten stories and changing life, from the ancient island to the Crete of today — now also easily readable in Greek.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 14
- Latest publication
- Sep 26, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 11, 2026
Latest issues
Crete: Knossos, The Real Truth (opens the original)
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I have been to Knossos many times over the years. These days I rarely go inside, but I still talk to visitors, particularly British visitors, who are excited about what they have seen. They have stood in the throne room of King Minos. They have admired his palace and looked for his labyrinth. They leave with the pleasing feeling that a story remembered from childhood has turned out to be true.I understand the attraction. What troubles me is how easily an archaeological question becomes a persona
Crete: Olous, The Cretan city beneath the water (opens the original)
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At Elounda, it is easy to look straight past an ancient city. The water catches your attention first, then the boats, the hills and the long sweep of land enclosing the bay. Near the old windmills and the narrow crossing at Poros, the sea can seem scarcely deep enough to conceal anything more substantial than a dropped sandal. Yet beneath that shallow water are walls laid by people who expected to walk beside them on dry ground.That is where the story of Olous begins for us, although it was very
Crete: The Smyrna Catastrophe (opens the original)
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Many people in Britain and elsewhere in Europe may not know why 14 September carries such deep meaning for Cretans and Greeks. It is a day of remembrance for a catastrophe that destroyed communities in Asia Minor and brought countless families to Greece, including here in Crete, to begin their lives again. I want to explain what happened, what was lost, and why this September day still matters more than a century later.Smyrna: The city that burned while the world watchedThere is something partic
Crete: Lato, Why Live On A Mountain? (opens the original)
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There are ancient places that reveal themselves at once. Knossos announces its importance before you have passed the entrance. Gortyn spreads itself across the plain with the confidence of a city that once governed Roman Crete. Lato does something different. It waits above Kritsa, folded into the mountains, and makes you climb before it begins to explain itself.At first, the position seems almost unreasonable. Why would anyone build a city here, on a steep saddle between two rocky heights, when
Crete: Dudley Perkins, He Escaped, Then He Came Back (opens the original)
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There are many extraordinary men in the story of wartime Crete, but Dudley Perkins has always seemed to me to belong to a slightly different category. Patrick Leigh Fermor came to Crete because that was his work. Xan Fielding did the same. John Pendlebury had already fallen in love with the island before the war and was almost a Cretan by adoption when the Germans came. Dudley Perkins was different. He was a young New Zealand soldier who arrived on Crete because an army sent him there, was defea
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