Edith Durham

• Illustration — Valley of Gusinje, High Albania, 1909 After the death of her father, Durham took on the responsibilities of caring for her sick mother for several years. It proved an exhausting experience. When she was 37, her doctor recommended that she should undertake a foreign vacation to recuperate. She took a trip by sea down the coast of Dalmatia, travelling from Trieste to Kotor and then overland to Cetinje, the capital of Montenegro. On her return to London she studied the Serbo-Croatian language and the history of the region. Durham travelled extensively in the Balkans in order to write her first book Through the Lands of the Serbs published in London in 1904. In 1908 she wrote High Albania after travelling through the Albanian highlands, from Montenegro to Shkodër. Over the next twenty years she focused particularly on Albania, which then was one of the most isolated and undeveloped areas of Europe. She worked in a variety of relief organisations, painted and wrote, and she also collected folklore and folk art. In 1911-13 she helped Albanian refugees in Montenegro where she raised funds for medicine, food and helped wounded soldiers. She contributed frequently to the journal Man and became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Her writings, however, were to earn her particular fame. She wrote seven books on Balkan affairs. High Albania (1909) is the best known and is still regarded as the pre-eminent guide to the customs and the society of northern Albania's highlands.

After her anti-Austrian phase and initial support for the creation of Yugoslavia, Durham became anti-Serbian after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Durham was a firm critic of the 6th January Dictatorship. According to American scholars Thomas Cushman and Stjepan Meštrović, her eccentric personality and her incessant lobbying activity made her despised by the British Foreign Office. She denounced what she termed "Serb vermin" for having "not created a Jugoslavia but have carried out their original aim of making Great Serbia.... Far from being liberated the bulk of people live under a far harsher rule than before". As she was a supporter of Albanian national aspirations, other British intellectuals who were supporters of the Yugoslav cause sharply criticised her views. Author Rebecca West included Durham in her description of the sort of traveller who came back "with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer" (Durham sued West over this) and then went on to say: "The Bulgarians, as preferred by some, and the Albanians, as championed by others, strongly resembled Sir Joshua Reynolds's picture of the Infant Samuel". R.W. Seton-Watson commented that "the fact is that while always denouncing 'Balkan mentality', she is herself exactly what she means by the word". For their part, however, the Albanians held Durham in high regard and dubbed her "Mbretëresha e Malësoreve" (the "Queen of the Highlanders)". She was given an embroidered waistcoat by the government to thank her for lobbying the British government on behalf of the occupied city of Korçë. She was well received in the Albanian Highlands. When she died in 1944, she received high praise for her work from the exiled King Zog, who wrote: "She gave us her heart and she won the ear of our mountaineers". She was also awarded a medal from him for her support. She is still regarded as something of a national heroine; in 2004, Albanian President Alfred Moisiu described her as "one of the most distinguished personalities of the Albanian world during the last century"