Theo Panayides

I wrote a number of stories in 2024 that meant a lot to me (the one about the growing use of antidepressants was an eye-opener). In the end, though, the one ...

There are times, admits George Rotos, when he’ll run into someone he knows and pretend not to see them – not because he doesn’t want to talk to them ...

A leaked memorandum from the ministry of agriculture caused great consternation a couple of weeks ago. In it, Agriculture Minister Maria Panayiotou – whose portfolio also includes rural development and the ...

“I want to do a crossover with the English-speaking audience,” says Athena Xenidou, sounding almost impatient. Xenidou is the director of Nachtland, a play by German writer Marius von Mayenburg ...

Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier, the unofficial starting point for the festive season – December 1, at least according to Advent calendars – getting progressively pushed back. Supermarkets have been playing ...

The koupa (plural, koupes) is having a moment. Earlier this month, a campaign was launched to add it to the EU’s PGI (Protected Geographical Indications) register as a traditional ...

Greek Cypriot schoolkids in Nicosia, organised by student committee Psem, protested on the 41st anniversary of the declaration of the ‘TRNC’. Unusually, the protest didn’t have a Greek nationalist ...

A photo, taken in the Turkish Cypriot enclave of northern Nicosia in the late 1960s, shows 15-year-old Suleyman posing with his rifle and his best friend, the two lads having ...

The little boy doesn’t hesitate once. He’s only 10 years old – the video was shot in Kakopetria in 2015 – but the piece of charcoal flies across the paper, adding lines ...

My name is Theo, and I’m an old-movie-holic. I’ve waited years to confess this addiction, hoping in vain for a suitable support group to emerge – and now, finally, ...

Footage from the annual 28th October parade – mostly made up of high school and university students – marking Greece’s resistance to Nazism and Fascism during World War II, though also ...

On the wall of a house near the Faneromeni underground car park in old Nicosia there’s a very polite printed note, in Greek and English: “Dear friend,” says the ...

Mention migrants, and you’re likely to be met with hostility. Everyone’s tired of the subject. Still, the asylum seekers who’ve been stuck in the UN buffer zone ...

Furen is the name of the place – situated right on Eleftheria Square, the most prominent location in all Nicosia – offering “a real taste of Lebanon”. But which Lebanon? The war-torn ...

We asked a random selection of people on the streets of Nicosia if they’d vote for Odysseas Michaelides – the former auditor-general who, following his dismissal, has said he’s ...

Looking at the chart of ‘coffee consumption by country’ at the World Population Review website – a slightly random chart, topped by Luxembourg and featuring such unexpected names as Belize and ...

We’re outside the church of Panayia Kousouliotissa near the village of Flasou, surrounded by pine, eucalyptus and prickly pear. The field next door looks cultivated, and I wonder what ...

Kids do it constantly, at least till they become jaded teenagers. ‘Look!’ they’ll exclaim, ‘A dog!’, pointing at a rocky protuberance (that does look a bit like a dog’...

Demetrios Bestitzanos is a doctor, specifically an internist. A few years ago, around the time he turned 50, he decided to relocate from Athens – where he’d been studying and working ...

Sakis Lazarides doesn’t live in Nicosia (or even Cyprus). That’s just where we happen to meet, at the Arabica Coffee House in a nondescript corner of the capital – ...

“That’s my favourite comment,” says Darin J. Sallam over Zoom – speaking of her film Farha (2021), which is showing at the Larnaca Municipal Theatre tomorrow at 8pm. The film will ...

Footage from a protest that took place in Nicosia calling for the Cyprus government to condemn Israel’s war in Gaza. The event featured testimony from Palestinians in Gaza, and ...

“I think that the mismatch between me and Cyprus,” says Jared Willis, “was that Cyprus doesn’t want boot-strappers. Cyprus doesn’t want people coming here with an idea, and ...

Figures from the Health Insurance Organisation (HIO) show that the number of patients taking antidepressant drugs almost doubled in Cyprus in the past five years: from 33,470 in 2019 to 64,611 in 2023. On ...