Athens, 9 November. Voula is a smart district of Athens for rich citizens who want to live by the sea. Sleek white apartment blocks with big balconies face the Aegean, which undulates like a lake of mercury under a cool grey sky. Set some way back from the coast is the local public hospital, Asklepieia Voulas, made up of low-rise buildings of plastered brick spread out among grass and trees and partly unmetalled tracks. You can wander in; there’s no security.
In a brightly lit room decorated with photographs of cross-sections of the living brains of unwell Greeks I meet Graeme Hesketh, an English radiologist married to a Greek cardiologist. He’s lived in Greece for thirty years. He’s a tall man with a sardonic expression, in a pale blue tunic and trousers and orthopaedic sandals. He hurt his foot recently and it hasn’t brightened his outlook.
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