Pilgrims, merchants and travellers from Britain saw Crete as an object of interest in the eastern Mediterranean from medieval times. They were followed by antiquaries, geographers, mapmakers, the Royal Navy, and in the late 19th c. by the first archaeologists. Excavation and research have continued to flourish there. One hundred years after Sir Arthur Evans began his work, the British School at Athens recalls in this collection of essays the many aspects of British scholarship which have formed part of an international effort to throw light on the past of the whole island from the earliest Neolithic settlements to the Cretan Renaissance.