11. Actor, architect, soldier…spy? The intriguing inner circle of Alexis Mardas

There appears to be some justification behind Mardas' reported claims of high-level connections in Greece.

Alexis Mardas. Image from the 1997 documentary, ‘The Beatles Anthology’ (Apple Corps Limited, Bob Smeaton)

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Alexis Mardas was integral to the Beatles’ plans to buy a Greek island – though not much is known about him. According to various accounts, Mardas spoke of having high-level connections in Greece that could help him find a suitable spot for the group. Specific claims he is said to have made include that his father was a high-up member of Greece’s secret police¹, and that his family’s social circles included Prince Philip². Mardas had a well-attested tendency for exaggeration, meaning that it can be hard to discern fact from possible fantasy in such reports. However, his apparent claims appear to have at least some basis in reality.

I’ve tried to find out more about Mardas’ background from various sources – and what I’ve learned points to a fascinating picture. Like many Greeks, both Alexis’ immediate family and the wider Mardas family have roots in the part of the world that is now Bulgaria, Turkey and the Black Sea coast – and moved to Greece itself in the early twentieth century. I was told that some parts of this wider family – which also happens to include a pioneer of Greek cinema – historically had significant wealth. Whether or not this was true of Alexis’ immediate family, by the late 1960s he was developing influential connections within Greek society, including a globally prominent architect and planner. Such relationships in turn seem to have helped him later build growing links within international royal circles. It also appears plausible that Alexis’ father did indeed have some connection to the colonels’ military government – possibly including work for a state intelligence service. But how or whether such relationships might have supported Magic Alex’s quest to find a Greek island for the Beatles remains unclear.

Alexis’ father: soldier or ‘shady businessman’?

Various media reports offer a glimpse of who Alexis Mardas was. Certainly by the late 1970s – long after he had parted ways with the Beatles – he does appear to have had extensive international royal connections. A Sunday Times article in 1978³ reported that the Sultan of Oman had returned three bullet-proof Mercedes cars to Night Vision Systems, a security company run by Mardas, due to their unsatisfactory performance. According to this article, Mardas counted the kings of Jordan, Spain, and Morocco, as well as the Shah of Iran, among his other customers and described himself as a close friend of the ex-King Constantine of Greece. And the 1979 New Statesman article (by the same author, Duncan Campbell)⁴ says that Constantine, then living in London, had “spent not a little of his time fixing up contacts and contracts for Mardas”, including among various other royal families around the world.

Reports of his earlier activities contain less detail – though Mardas did sometimes speak to the media about his life. In 1968 he met a reporter from the Daily Mail⁵ who profiled Mardas and his inventions, saying:

“Inventor John Alexis Mardas came to Britain on a tour two years ago while studying chemistry and electronics. He thought of staying for a few days because it sounded a nice country after he once talked to Prince Philip and Lord Snowdon⁶ in Greece. But he stayed on, married a Greek girl here this year, and intends to become a British citizen.”

In 1995, he was interviewed by Stavroula Panagiotaki from the Greek magazine Gynaika, who later recalled a “peaceful man, incredibly kind with a terribly soft voice”. Her article briefly mentions Mardas’ background, saying that he was born in Athens, “the son of a soldier from Eastern Rumelia”. The military reference aligns with other mentions of Mardas’ father – the Daily Mail article, for example, described Alexis as the “son of a Greek ex-general”. The New Statesman article mentioned above refers to a different kind of work for the state, saying Alexis’ father was “a major in the Greek secret police”.

Within Alexis’ extended family, there is a somewhat different impression again. Last year I spoke to Argyris Mardas, an entrepreneur and author who describes himself as a distant cousin of Alexis, “two or three generations” away from a common ancestor. He never met Alexis, but has spoken to people that did. Argyris told me that as far as he knew, Alexis’ father was not a general, though he believed it was possible he had military experience of some kind. More significant, in his view, was Mardas senior’s work as a businessman. Indeed, he described Alexis’ father as a “shady businessman” who was “very close to the [colonels’] government” and involved in “a lot of work that [would now be seen as] questionable”.

“A lot of his business was with the government,” he said. “But I don't think that he worked inside the government…He didn’t have a good name.” Argyris had also heard that Alexis’ father had a connection to Constantine, the King of Greece⁷ - but he didn’t know any details about this.

Argyris didn’t claim to have direct knowledge of these matters and was only passing on what he had heard. Family stories can of course become distorted over distance and time - and in this case, the apparent contradictions with other accounts seem to deepen the mystery further. But from the references above and others, some consistent themes do emerge with regard to Alexis Mardas’ father: some kind of association with the military, and a sense of secretive activity. I suggest one possible explanation for this further below.

Roots in Bulgaria and Istanbul

There is more certainty about the geographical origins of the wider Mardas family – which the Gynaika article hints at through its reference to “Eastern Rumelia”. This was once a province in the Ottoman Empire with a substantial Greek population. By the 20th century it had effectively become part of Bulgaria. According to Argyris, the wider Mardas family has its origins in and around this part of the world. His own grandfather, he says, was born in Eastern Rumelia around 1910. Some time later – about 20 years, he thinks – the family moved to Constantinople (as Istanbul was then known), and later still to Greece itself.

This journey is in keeping with wider historical trends. In the early twentieth century, there was widespread migration among ethnic Greeks during territorial upheavals that included the first world war and its aftermath. In Bulgaria, growing nationalist tensions led to a violent anti-Greek movement breaking out in 1906. Many Greeks left the country in the ensuing years, with some going directly to Greece itself and others joining Greek communities in other places. This formed part of tensions in the wider region that led to an influx of refugees into Greece from what is now Turkey, as well as Thrace (including Eastern Rumelia) and the Black Sea coast. Overall, by the early 1920s, these refugees comprised about 25% of Greece’s population. This was the turbulent context in which many members of the Mardas family eventually settled in Greece.

In Constantinople, where Argyris’ grandfather lived for a while, there was historically a large Greek community. One notable member of the wider Mardas family, Argyris told me, was born in the city in 1875: the actor and director Achilleas Madras, whose original surname was Mardas. Madras is now seen as a pioneer of Greek cinema for cult films such as the Wizard of Athens (1931). According to reports, he studied in Paris, where he worked with the legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt. He travelled widely for his work, including spending some time in Athens. And he was married to his co-star in the Wizard of Athens, Frida Pupelina.

Achilleas “was [from] a very wealthy family”, said Argyris. “He fell in love with an actress. And he wanted to marry her. But the family said no.” According to Argyris, it was in retaliation for this disapproval that Madras changed his surname.

A photo of Achilleas Madras from 1916 (the caption uses the spelling ‘Mardas’)

The journey followed by Argyris’ grandfather – from Eastern Rumelia, via Istanbul, to Greece itself – was also taken by others in the extended family, said Argyris – even if this meant a drop in prosperity for some. Some parts of this wider family were wealthy and “had properties in Istanbul”, said Argyris. “But when they came to Greece, they left a lot of things behind.”

Connections to wealth, power and royalty

Argyris didn’t know the specific route that Alexis’ immediate family took to Greece. But whatever his family’s social status, by some means Alexis Mardas – who was born in 1942 – attended the prestigious Moraitis private school in Athens. And by the late 1960s at least, his family had some influential relationships within Greek society. One particularly significant connection was the Doxiadis family. The “Greek girl” whom the Daily Mail tells us Alexis married in 1968 was Euphrosyne Doxiadis, daughter of the renowned architect and planner Constantinos.

It would be difficult to overstate how influential Constantinos Doxiadis was at the time – not only in Greece, but globally. A New Yorker article in 1963 said that he was probably, "in terms of the number of human dwellings involved, the greatest city planner now at work in the world", impacting the lives of an estimated 10 million people. In the 1950s and 1960s, his firm Doxiadis Associates grew from its base in Athens to have offices on five continents. The company’s work “involved the planning of whole new cities and the rearrangement of whole regions,” said the article. Major projects included designing a new capital city – Islamabad – for Pakistan, overseeing Iraq's national housing programme, and a large urban renewal plan in Philadelphia.

The celebrated Greek architect and planner, Constantinos A. Doxiadis. His daughter Euphrosyne married Alexis Mardas in 1968. Image: Aurora west / CC BY 4.0

Doxiadis was also a significant figure in global politics following the second world war. During Greece’s wartime occupation, while working in a government job he also led an underground unit that gathered military information to support resistance efforts. (After the war, this work was recognised through an honorary OBE from Britain.) And Doxiadis was central to post-war reconstruction efforts. From 1948 until 1951 he co-ordinated US investment in Greece under the Marshall Plan, as the minister overseeing Greece's post-war recovery. This made him an important point of contact in foreign policy circles, and of interest to international journalists and politicians.

After setting up his firm in the 1950s, Doxiadis deepened his influence through the Delos Symposium, an annual cruise through the Greek islands he hosted annually from 1963, which brought together intellectual and political luminaries from across the world. Prominent guests included the architect Buckminster Fuller, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan, and the anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Other members of the Doxiadis family were well-connected in their own right: Constantinos’ father Apostolos, a doctor, was a minister in the Greek government, while his brother Thomas was a doctor to the Greek royal family.

Alexis’ father: another Argyris Mardas

But how well did Alexis Mardas know this illustrious family? We know that after marrying Euphrosyne he had professional contact with Doxiadis’ firm. In 1968-69, when Mardas was a director at the Beatles' company Apple, he and others corresponded with staff at Doxiadis Associates to discuss possible record publishing and distribution. And a photograph of a group of people including Alexis Mardas and Constantinos Doxiadis was taken in Athens in October that year.

Records of these interactions are held in Doxiadis’ personal archive in Athens. Interestingly, the archive also holds a file of correspondence between Constantinos Doxiadis and someone called Argyris Mardas when Doxiadis was living in Australia in the early 1950s: the letters discuss possible employment and travel arrangements for construction workers migrating from Greece to Australia.

This Argyris Mardas was almost certainly Alexis’ father. He has the right first name – which we are told in a Greek newspaper’s report about the Beatles’ visit to Greece. Describing Ringo Starr’s departure for London, an article in To Vima on 26 July says: “Ringo and his office manager [Neil Aspinall] were accompanied to the airport by Mr Argyris Mardas, the father of the young man who is hosting the Beatles here.”

A photo from ‘To Vima’ on 26 July shows Ringo Starr (left) and Neil Aspinall boarding a plane for London, being bid farewell by Alexis’ father Argyris Mardas (right). Image © British Library Board MFM.MF752E, 26.7.67 p4.

Backing this up, the Argyris Mardas that I spoke to – the distant cousin of Alexis – said: “Argyris is a frequent name that you find in our family. My grandfather was Argyris Mardas, his grandfather was Argyris Mardas – it’s like that.”

If the Argyris Mardas named in the 1951-52 archive correspondence was indeed Alexis’ father, it suggests that the Mardas and Doxiadis families may have known each other long before Alexis married Euphrosyne. Indeed, my understanding is that the connection goes back many decades. The two families both have roots in the same town in Eastern Rumelia – Stenimachos (now called Asenovgrad), which once had a predominantly Greek population. Apostolos Doxiadis, Constantinos’ father, was a Greek activist there⁸. But amid the rising nationalist tensions, the Doxiadis family moved to Athens in 1915 when Constantinos was one year old. According to the 1963 New Yorker article, Apostolos was sentenced to death in Bulgaria for his activities that year, but he escaped and later joined his family who had already fled to Greece’s capital. In 1922 he became the Greek cabinet minister for refugees.

I was told that Alexis’ father, Argyris Mardas, was also born in Stenimachos. The two families knew each other both in Stenimachos and as part of the migrant community of its former residents in Athens (I’ve seen a photograph that includes both Argyris and Constantinos when they were both children). This long-standing connection means Alexis Mardas would have known the Doxiadis family in some capacity before he came to London in the mid-sixties. This would have given him some justification to claim high-level connections, and it provides a possible route for Mardas’ reputed connection to Greek royalty. After all, Constantinos’ brother Thomas was doctor to the Greek royal family. And the 1979 New Statesman article mentioned above describes Euphrosyne Doxiadis (whom Mardas married in 1968) as a “confidante” to the Greek royals. In turn, it could be this royal connection that explains the rumours about Mardas knowing Prince Philip – who was related to the Greek royal family and born in Greece.

Greek intelligence agency

According to the 1979 New Statesman article, it was indeed Mardas’ 1968 marriage that gave him his “foothold into the royal circles”. But in summer 1967, when he was looking for an island for the Beatles, his connection to the Doxiadis family would have been significantly weaker. If Mardas’ father did indeed work for or with the Greek state at that point, that could have been a more effective source of contacts. Did he? My understanding is that Alexis’ father, Argyris, had a career in the Greek army, rising to a mid-senior rank, before later working in business – and was firmly on the right wing of politics. This military background means he may conceivably have had some connection to the colonels who took over Greece in 1967. And politically he was much closer to their views than the progressive-minded Constantinos Doxiadis was.

Though this is less certain, there could be a further connection to the Greek state. It’s been plausibly suggested to me that Alexis’ father at one point may have worked for the Kentriki Ypiresia Pliroforion (KYP) – Greece’s national intelligence agency that was founded in 1953. If true, this would make sense of the impression, that comes across in various references to Alexis Mardas’ father, of him being involved with something that was in some way military but also secret. KYP was just that: an intelligence agency with close links to the army. But whether this is actually the explanation remains unclear.

1. Barry Miles (1997) Many Years from Now

2. e.g. Philip Norman (2016) Paul McCartney: The Biography

3. Sunday Times, 16 April 1978

4. ‘Hawkers by appointment’, Duncan Campbell, New Statesman, 3 August 1979

5. Daily Mail, 2 November 1968

6. The photographer and filmmaker who was married to Princess Margaret from 1960 to 1978.

7. Constantine was King of Greece from 1964 until the Greek monarchy was abolished in 1973. He lived in exile from December 1967 following an unsuccessful attempted counter-coup against the colonels’ regime.

8. Discussed in the book Between Two Motherlands (2011) by Theodora Dragostinova