Nearly a decade ago, I made my first trip to Crete to research my book Kidnap in Crete, about the 1944 kidnap of the German General Kreipe by the Cretan underground and the Special Operations Executive (including the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor).
I went expecting a holiday island and that was what, at first, I found. In the end, I could not have been more mistaken.
My contact was a distinguished Cretan historian, Constantinos Mamalakis. For our first meeting, he invited me to his house. There he showed me his extensive collection of historical material relating to the Second World War. His archive included an arsenal of live ordnance: hand grenades, submachine guns, 25-pounder shells, pistols and the piéce de résistance,
