Julian Hoffman was yesterday presented with the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award for his book Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece  (Elliott & Thompson).

He received £10,000 at a ceremony at King’s College London that was also a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the award. It is given annually for a work wholly or mainly about some aspect of Greece or the world of Hellenism, published in English in its first edition in the previous year.

The judges decided this year’s winner by consensus, describing Lifelines as a “wonderfully evocative account of Hoffman’s migration from London to the spectacular and remote Prespa Lakes, the mountainous tri-point of North Macedonia, Albania and Greece”.

Hoffman was born in the north-east of England and grew up in southern Ontario, but since the summer of 2000 has been living with his wife in a mountain village beside the lakes.