Friend of the House

About the Role

We're after people who have loved Greece a long time and are placed to do something about it — from wherever in the world you happen to live.

Greece is being flattened into three photographs, and the country behind them is going unread. So the house publishes the other one: the Stories, the guides, the House and Anchorage Notes, the Calendar of what is genuinely happening this year. All of it given away, none of it behind a fee. That is our mission, and it is worth little if it reaches nobody. The house can write it. What the house cannot do is walk it into the right rooms.

This standing doesn't want your hours. Nearly everything useful here takes minutes: a name we ought to know, an introduction to someone who won't answer a letter from a stranger, a word said for the country in a room we don't sit in, the work put in front of a reader who'd never have found it alone. You decide who sees it, and who we should be talking to.

The precedent isn't a modern one. The committees that stood behind Greece in the 1820s sat in London, Paris and Geneva, and most of their members never sailed. They wrote, argued and opened doors from home, and it counted as much as anything done on the ground. That is the shape of this standing.

It's honorary, it's remote, there's no rota and nobody will chase you — said here rather than left for you to find out later. Involved enough to be worth your name, light enough to leave alone for a season.

For what the house believes about Greece, and why this work exists, read our Community Values.

What You'll Do

Pick one. Nobody does all of it, and nobody is assigned anything.

  • Say a word for the country where you already are — the dinner, the board, the club, the friends planning next summer — when Greece comes up and the version in the room is the flat one
  • Make an introduction: the family with the house on Patmos, the captain, the gallerist in Athens, the abbot, the hotelier you were at school with
  • Put what we publish in front of people who'd never find it — a story sent to the friend planning a summer, a guide to the group already arguing about where to go
  • Bring in the next Friend of the House: someone who knows the country as you do and is listened to on it
  • Say who should be writing about Greece — an editor, a correspondent, a publication worth knowing — and introduce us if you can
  • Tell us what the country is missing from our pages: the island we've read wrong, the house nobody writes about, the season everyone gets backwards
  • Lend your name to it — named as a Friend, quoted where you're glad to be, consulted before we publish on somewhere you know

Who You Are

There's nothing to prepare and no CV to send. What counts is where you sit, who you know and what you've noticed over the years. That said, here's what makes a strong fit:

  • Greece is somewhere you have a stake in — a house in the family, a village, a church you know the key-holder of, the same anchorage for thirty summers — rather than somewhere you've been
  • You've watched Greece misread in print for years, and it still bothers you
  • You know people the house can't reach by writing to them, and you're willing to say a word on our behalf
  • When you recommend something, people act on it — and you're careful about what you put your name to
  • Discretion about what's told to you in confidence and not put on a page
  • Self-direction — nobody will be assigning you hours, and none of this happens unless you decide it does
  • English or Greek for correspondence with us. Every other language is welcome, and no experience of anything is asked for

What We Offer

Standing, in the older sense of the word. A Friend of the House is named as one, counted among the people this house keeps, and consulted as somebody whose judgement about Greece is worth more than the house's own. Your name goes on whatever you touch, and what's published stays up under it.

You'll see how a small private house is built from the inside: the people who run it, the decisions as they're taken. It's early. There's no crowd here, and whoever comes now sets the terms the later ones arrive into.

Nobody is paid for this, and it isn't a job. Nothing is owed in either direction — you give what you want to give, and stop when you like. We'd rather have 20 people who mean it than 500 names on a list.

Apply

The form asks one question — what Greece means to you — and there's nothing to attach. Answer it however you like. If it helps, tell us where you know the country from and what you'd be able to open: a door, a room of people, a country we're not read in. If you've written or photographed something, say so and we'll ask to see it, and if what you'd give isn't on this page, write anyway.

Some would rather see more of this Greece written down than take a part in the writing, and that is its own kind of friendship. If that is where you'd stand, begin a conversation instead. There is no fund and no tier behind that line, and none is planned.

We read every enquiry carefully, and reply where enthusiasm and sensibility fit our practice.
Thank you for your patience.