The Hellenic Centre in December 2026
Two December evenings at the Hellenic Centre — Marina Sakali on the Ottoman Greek press of 1830 to 1862, and the second lecture in the series on Greek women painters.
December closes the Hellenic Centre’s autumn on two evenings, and both are archival in the good sense: someone has gone into material nobody had read properly and come back with an argument.
Marina Sakali’s subject is the Greek-language press inside the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1862, which she reads through its advertisers and correspondents rather than its editorials — the result is less a media history than a portrait of a generation living through the Tanzimat reforms. Gelly Gryntaki’s is the second instalment of a series that began in October with the named women painters of antiquity, and now takes the run from Greek independence to 1960.
Both are at seven, both cost five pounds, and both need booking. The Centre’s next programme is published in the new year.
The Uses of Oppression: Greek Newspapers in the Ottoman Empire 1830–62
The Hellenic Centre · Marylebone
Marina Sakali, Lady Marks, discusses her book with Dr Şükrü Ilıcak, Associate Professor at the University of Athens.
The Ottoman Greek press ran from 1830 to 1862 through the reform decades known as the Tanzimat, and was both a product of that upheaval and an agent of it. Sakali reads it through its own editors, correspondents, advertisers and readers, which turns a press history into an account of how a generation actually lived. Seven o'clock, £5.
Proofs of the Impossible: Three Greek Women Painters, 1821–1960
The Hellenic Centre · Marylebone 17 December
The second lecture in The Origin of Painting, the art historian Gelly Gryntaki's series on Greek women in the visual arts.
October's opening lecture began in antiquity with Timarete and Anaxandra. This one covers the hundred and forty years from independence to 1960, and the three painters who worked through them. Seven o'clock, £5.