For Charmian Clift, Greece was the Promised Land. In the 1950s, Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston left gray post-war London to come to Greece, with their two children and their typewriters. First, they settled on the small island of Kalymnos, then on Hydra, with a plan to live simply and devote themselves to writing, away from the noise of the big city. The result was two of Charmian Clift's most well-known and beloved books, the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. In Peel Me a Lotus, we are transported to Hydra, where Clift and Johnston found themselves at the center of an informal bohemian community of artists and writers, among them Leonard Cohen, who became their tenant, and his girlfriend, Marianne Ihlen.