‘Used as propaganda’: the Beatles’ Greek island plans and international politics

Abstract

In July 1967 the Beatles were making plans to buy a Greek island, and visited the country with this aim in mind. At the time, negative international opinion regarding the military dictatorship that had recently come to power in Greece was contributing to a decline in the country’s tourism sector. Several credible accounts suggest that the Beatles’ visit was used to generate publicity in the hope of encouraging tourism to Greece. But if so, the details of how such an initiative might have come about have remained unclear. In this article I examine the evidence for the group’s activity in Greece, as well as relevant actions from other individuals and the wider historical context. Doing so highlights a range of political connections and dimensions to the events that offer a new perspective on the Beatles and may help us better understand the interactions between politics, celebrity and culture at the time. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .