3. Revealed: the island the Beatles ‘wanted to buy’
This secluded cluster of islands aligns with many of the descriptions given by Beatles insiders
Before visiting Mykonos, I had thought that Stapodia, the islet off its coast, could well have been the small island the Beatles had wanted. On paper all the details seemed to fit – but the reality was very different. Realising this made me question some assumptions I’d made about the Beatles’ island plans. I wondered if the idyllic island the group were said to have been interested in had even existed at all, or if the Beatles had perhaps never actually visited it. Then, during the first Covid lockdown of 2020, I looked again at some of the accounts of the group’s trip to Greece.
The confusing names of Aegos and Leslo attributed to the island hardly help to locate it. But there are some other clues. In his book With the Beatles, Alistair Taylor suggests that it was easily accessible from the Greek capital, writing that when he visited with Alexis Mardas “we drove out of Athens to a little village and took a fishing boat out… to Paradise”.
Taylor also recalls a specific scene from when he returned to Greece with the Beatles:
“Once we sailed up to a kind of natural canal through some rocks between two islands, which was spanned by a lifting bridge. As we chugged slowly up to the raised bridge, we saw thousands of the local people on either side, waving, shouting greetings and brandishing Beatles records. So much for getting away from it all into the wide blue yonder of the Aegean!”
Here, Taylor could well be referring to the gulf which runs between the Greek mainland and the country’s second largest island, Evia. Close to Evia’s capital Chalcis, the gulf narrows into the strait of Euripus, less than 200m wide at the tightest point. In Chalcis the strait is spanned by two bridges, including the so-called ‘old bridge’ which can be opened to let boats through.
The Evian gulf is home to a number of small, secluded islands. Just south of Chalcis, for example, is Agia Triada/Ethereal – the supposedly guitar-shaped island that is sometimes associated with the Beatles. Further towards Evia’s southern tip are the Petalioi, a group of ten small islands which count many notable figures among previous owners. But George Harrison offers a hint that points elsewhere. In The Beatles Anthology book (part of the same project as the TV documentary), he is quoted recalling that as the group cruised on their yacht “Greece was on the left, a big island was on the right”. If this is accurate, it suggests that at one point the Beatles may have been travelling north up the gulf, with Evia to their east.
At the very tip of Evia’s north-west corner is a group of low-lying islands called Lichadonisia. The archipelago’s formation from a volcano is suggested in the way these seem to flow across the gulf like lava, just breaking the water’s surface. The largest, Monolia, is only about 500m from Evia’s Kavos beach, from where you can see a sandy bay across the water, surrounded by trees. Among the group of smaller islands spreading out to Monolia’s south, five are named, with various even smaller dots peeking out of the sea alongside them. The southernmost island, Strongyli, stands slightly separate from these, rising in a small green dome with a lighthouse.
The Lichadonisia are sometimes given nicknames such as the ‘Greek Seychelles’ – and on a good day, their turquoise-tinted vistas can live up to the billing. In summer, small boats frequently make the short trips there from both Evia and the mainland. In September 2020 I took one of these to Monolia from Evia, to test my idea that it was this group of islands that had so captivated the Beatles.
Arriving early in the morning, I was virtually the only person there. Water lapped gently against the sides of the boat as it pulled in, and the sun had yet to reach its full intensity. I immediately encountered Monolia’s striking landscape, with its combination of shrubby green trees, golden sand and black volcanic rocks. It’s unusual for Greece – and it also seemed to match scenes I recalled from the documentary footage of the Beatles’ trip.
In 1928, 70 people were recorded as living on Monolia, but by 1961 this had dwindled to 25. It is now uninhabited, but signs of the former community are still here. On the island’s southern side is a chapel that is still used for weddings, with several other stone buildings close by in various states of disrepair. From this rocky shore, you can look out across to the other islands. Walking here along a dirt path flanked by bushes and gnarled olive trees, then returning to swim in the clear water at Monolia’s main beach, I could easily imagine the Beatles seeing these islands as the perfect escape. Despite being so close to the Greek mainland, they have an other-worldly feel, underlined by the wildness of the vegetation and views of blue mountains across the gulf, fading into the horizon.
The islands tick most of the boxes in the descriptions of the islands, too – from the handful of stone houses to the gently curving bay. They are certainly a much closer fit to the accounts than any other groups of islands I’m aware of. Monolia is about 345,000 sq m, or 85 acres, close to the sizes often stated for “Leslo”. The apparent confusion over whether the desired island was about 80 acres, or more like 100, could perhaps be explained by whether or not any neighbouring islands were counted in the total alongside Monolia. And the somewhat indeterminate number of Lichadonisia could explain authors’ references to either four or five smaller nearby islands.
When visiting the area, the emphasis on olive trees in many of the descriptions also makes sense. These cover not only much of Monolia, but also large areas of northern Evia and the mainland across the gulf. The photographs below indicate how the islands’ flat silhouettes and their distinctive landscapes recall glimpses visible in the Anthology documentary footage about the Beatles’ island plans.
Above: A silhouette of an island from The Beatles Anthology documentary
Below: Monolia, seen from Kavos beach on Evia © Jonathan Knott
Above: An image from The Beatles Anthology documentary
Below: Lichadonisia © Jonathan Knott
Above: An image from The Beatles Anthology documentary
Below: Lichadonisia. Image: Marjan Despotovich/shutterstock.com
As the sun heated up, more visitors disembarked from boats and Monolia’s main beach began to fill up. The company running many of these trips belongs to the Lyberis family, who lived on the islands until the 1960s. Giannis Lyberis, who died in 2014, lived on Monolia until he was seven. On the boat trip company’s website are his words recalling that he and his parents moved away in 1964 so he could attend primary school on the mainland: “Intense memories and deep nostalgia always accompanied me: our two-story stone house, my grandfather's fish tavern with the courtyard that reached the sea, the church of Agios Georgios next to us.”
In 2009, Giannis told the newspaper Ta Nea that his family owns a small part of Monolia itself, but has a usufruct (the legal right to use someone else’s land) for the rest of the island: "Sixty stremmata[1] out of two hundred and seventy belong to my family, while we have the usufruct for the rest of the island…so this place remains as nature gave birth to it,” he said.
Giannis’ sons Costas and Georgios now manage the boat trips. I wondered whether they could tell me anything about whether the Beatles had been interested in these islands in the 1960s – and when I spoke to Georgios, he told me that they had. He said he had heard from his grandfather that the Beatles had made an offer to buy Monolia from a number of families that owned its land, but that this never progressed to an actual sale. In his understanding, somebody had come to Monolia on the group’s behalf “to see the island, and to see all the olives around the island – and they [the Beatles] want[ed] to buy [it], but…it never happened”.
These comments bolster the case that it was the Lichadonisia that the Beatles had set their sights on. And in my opinion it’s hard to see how some shots from The Beatles Anthology documentary, as well as several descriptions of the islands from Beatles insiders, could be of any other place.
But in any case, some questions still remain. Georgios told me that the smaller Lichadonisia islands near Monolia belong to the local municipality, Istiaia, and he believed that this meant that the Beatles wouldn’t have been able to buy them (I have attempted to clarify this with the municipality but they have not confirmed this). However, the letter from the Beatles’ lawyers clearly says the group wanted to buy the main island and the several small islands surrounding it. In addition, Georgios didn’t think that the Beatles themselves had actually visited the islands. And I’m aware of a different island whose owner has also told me the Beatles expressed an interest in buying it.
Then there’s the mystery of why the name Leslo came to be attributed to the island – and why in official records, it is referred to as Aegos in Konstadinos.
In short, although the Lichadonisia tick many of the boxes, some details of the Beatles’ plans and their trip to Greece remain unclear. It seems that the two Beatles who are still alive won’t be able to help shed light on these questions for now. A spokesman for Paul McCartney said he wouldn’t have time to comment, and I haven’t heard back from Ringo Starr’s representatives. But there may be others who can help.
[1] A traditional Greek unit of measurement which is now standardised as 1,000 sq m, although historically definitions have varied