Making the film ...

In March / April 2022, COVID willing, we planned to film a documentary of a journey based on John Waller’s book Walking the Corfu Trail with Friends, Flowers and Food. The island of Corfu is covered in flowers in the Spring. 

A main task during the walk was to identify from where Edward Lear made his beautiful landscape paintings between 1848 and 1864. According to Homer, Odysseus landed on Corfu on his way home to Ithaca. The film will find where he landed and where King Alcinous’s city was located.

For lovers of and walkers in countryside away from mass tourism, the film has few equals.

In early 2024, James Smith of the BBC series The Thick of It agreed to be Edward Lear. In July 2024, we shot the film in Corfu. My film Edward Lear’s Corfu in Climate Crisis failed, at the final hurdle, to be shown at the London Film Festival in June.  

In the opening scene I refer to my book Venetian Corfu and Edward Lear’s Paintings.

John Waller