This is an informal talk I gave at a 2-day conference on 26-27 June 2026 in honour of my partner, Costas Douzinas. Talks and eulogies were given by critical legal scholars, philosophers, political theorists, and political researchers – all very erudite and serious. But I had the task of speaking about the ‘personal Costas’, as well as embarrassing him. I did my best. The first thing Costas sees when he wakes from sleep in our Bloomsbury flat, is Sophia Kalogeropoulou’s Od

On 24 April 1941, 21-year-old Frank Joseph Gill was in the port of Piraeus, unimaginably far from his home in Liverpool, England. His sweat-stained uniform showed that he was a Lance-Corporal in the Royal Engineers. He was part of a band of servicemen from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand who had been ordered to evacuate from Greece, in anticipation of the imminent arrival of German troops. Along with hundreds of civilians and other servicemen, he boarded the yacht SS Hella