When you eat an olive, you partake of ancient history:
The entire Mediterranean seems to rise out of the sour, pungent taste of black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat and wine, a taste as old as cold water. Only the sea itself seems as ancient a part of the region as the olives and its oil, that like no other products of nature, have shaped civilisations from remotest antiquity to the present.
(Quoted from page 12 of Olive: A Global History, by Fabrizia Lanza. Reaktion Books, 2011.)
For a brief biography of Laurence Durrell, click here. For images of or relating to Laurence Durrell, click here.
For some background of Fabrizia Lanza, click here. For images of or relating to Fabrizia Lanza, click here. For all sorts of images of olives, click here.
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