Heaven and heartbreak on Leonard Cohen's Hydra

It’s 60 years since the folk rock legend discovered a small Greek island, bought a hovel and met the woman who became his lifelong muse.

Marianne Ihlen with her baby son, Axel Jensen, with Leonard Cohen, an unidentified friend and George Johnston and Charmian Clift on Hydra in October 1960. James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

Steve MeachamFreelance writer

Mar 13, 2020 – 12.00am

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‘It’s just a few more steps,” says Maria Voulgari, my classically educated Greek guide as we explore Leonard Cohen’s Hydra – the idyllic island where he wrote most of his stunning debut album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967).

Were the womanising Ladies' Man still alive, Maria is precisely the kind of beautiful, intelligent woman he would have tried to hit on (though he’d have found a far more elegant term for it). Still, she explains, when Cohen arrived on Hydra in 1960, he was a penniless failure. The next decade would be the making of him.