A visual narrative of my father's tour of duty of Cyprus from 1969 - 1970, with extracts from a friend's letters to him.

The Tyrant of Louroujina is constructed from a personal archive of photographs taken by Lt. Michael Nestor on his first tour of duty with the United Nations in Cyprus from late 1969 to early 1970. Juxtaposed against the selected images are thoughts from letters of a close friend. In these letters inescapable perennial issues of racism, anti-Semitism, the legacy of war and the world’s great powers are touched on.

In 1969 Cyprus was inexorably sinking into deeper conflict and division. Even if the patrolled landscape seems superficially unaware, or indifferent, graffiti scrawled on a wall announces that ‘the Anglo-Turkish plan will fail’ and many of the photographed places would nominally vanish after 1974.