Phaistos Painting

Charles Howard was born in London in 1936. His parents, both actors, led a nomadic existence and Charlie left school aged 15 to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. He first came to Greece in the late 1950s to work on the Michael Cacoyiannis film, Eroika. Soon after the fall of the junta in 1974 (during which he actively supported the resistance), he settled permanently in Greece with his wife, Dizzy, and two young daughters. A self-taught artist, he gave up acting to spend his summers painting from their one-room house on the island of Skyros, and winters teaching and painting in Athens. A lifelong collector of 78 rpm blues records, Charlie also began collecting, archiving, compiling, and remastering original recordings of rembetika, the music of the Greek underworld. From 2006, he divided his time between Athens and Istanbul. In the Time of the Sultans — Urban Chronicles from 19th Century Istanbul, his first book-length translation, was published shortly before his death in Athens in September 2021.