From Grammos to Covid-19: eight decades of adventures and derailments, all viewed through as many images that the author recalls more as prompts than as testimonies.

From Eisenhower's visit to Athens (1959), to a meeting at Orly Airport (1979) and a trial in Strasbourg (1999), the pages of this personal narrative parade, besides individuals – more or less known – ideas and arguments connected by a thread: to move forward, with a European and open Greece ready to face all the great challenges.

Something far from self-evident in a country that, every 15-20 years, seems to bet with itself to go backward. Hence the title Two steps forward, one step back, a paraphrase of another, much better known of course, chosen to signify that around 2035, some other abrupt turn awaits us.