Dugald Bruce Lockhart

And he looks across the cafe and he feels his eyes burning into him.

And he sees this Greek guy, wily Greek guy, staring at him with blazing eyes and looking fiercely intelligent, but rough and tough.

And the guy comes over and basically says, who are you?

What are you doing?

I'm going to come and work for you.

And this is Zorba.

It was that meeting in the cafe in Piraeus, twinned with my meeting with these Australians the second year after I went to Paris.

And

Zorba is the absolute antithesis of the narrator.

And that relationship was very much in my mind when I wrote it.

And I love that idea of if you get the initial spark right, then you open up avenues for all sorts of storytelling.

So that was a huge influence.

And then there was another, but technically this is Heinrich, because Heinrich and Ricky are a pair.

Heinrich is older.

He's the retired German artist for whom Ricky works and for whom Alistair Aston eventually works.

But the Magus by John Fowles was another influence.

Again, the young teacher who goes out to Greece.

He's bored with life.

And he eventually comes to this villa where he's been looking at it for days and days and days.

And finally, he decides to go and explore it.