Argyris Dinopoulos

Argyris Dinopoulos was born on 17 March 1956 to Vasilis and Maria Dinopoulos.

His father, from Trikala in Thessaly, was a retired brigadier of the Greek Army. In the war of 1940, as a first-year military cadet, he fled with his fellow cadets to Crete, where they fought the German invaders. During the Occupation he took to the mountains and joined the resistance. After retiring from the army, he devoted himself to literary translation. He translated — directly from the original Russian — plays and novels by Dostoevsky and Chekhov. His translations were published in twelve volumes by well-known publishing houses.

His mother, Maria, from Metsovo, was a retired secondary-school teacher of home economics.

Argyris Dinopoulos developed a special bond with his grandfather, who was a notary in Trikala, Thessaly. The elder Argyris Dinopoulos — born in 1891 in Mouzaki, Karditsa — fought in the Balkan Wars and lived through the dramatic events of the National Schism.

For the grandson, those stories were his first encounter with modern Greek history and politics. Argyris Dinopoulos spent his childhood in various Greek cities, as his father’s military postings obliged the family — mother and three children — to follow him.

Through primary school and the early years of secondary school he also attended catechism classes. The principles of Christian and Greek education thus shaped his character and value system from a very young age. He graduated from the Leonteios Lyceum of Nea Smyrni in the summer of the Metapolitefsi — the restoration of democracy in 1974.

That same year, 1974, he passed the entrance examinations and enrolled at the Law School of the University of Athens. In 1978 he received his law degree and went on to pursue postgraduate studies abroad.

First at Paris 2 University, in commercial law; then at University College London, where in 1981 he earned his master’s degree (LL.M.) in the law of the socialist countries and the relationship between law and Marxism. His thesis, “International Socialist Law,” examined relations among the socialist countries from the October Revolution to the Brezhnev Doctrine.

He completed his military service as a reserve officer and, as soon as he was discharged, began practising law.

He came to journalism by chance, but it grew into a great love. In 1984 he filed his first reports at ERT, which was, for him too, the great school of journalism and television.

And so it all began.

When private radio arrived in Greece, he went to work at the radio station SKAI and at the newspaper Apogevmatini. His work at SKAI led ERT to terminate his contract — at the time, radio was considered a competitor to television.

In 1992 his association with ERT ended; immediately afterwards he joined the newspapers Kathimerini and To Vima, and the television station Antenna TV (ANT1).

"Journalism & Reportage" in the Archive →

Argyris Dinopoulos served as a war correspondent in difficult and dangerous parts of the world. He travelled many times to Yugoslavia to cover the civil wars and interventions that led to the country’s dissolution.

On the front lines

• He was in Romania for the fall of Ceaușescu.
• In the Gulf War.
• In the Soviet Union, during the coup against Gorbachev.
• In Mexico, during the Chiapas uprising.
• In Rwanda, during the genocide.
• In Albania, during the armed uprisings.
• In Afghanistan and Iraq, during the American interventions.

From the experiences of those years came his first books.

"Dispatches from the front" in the Archive →

Alongside journalism, Argyris Dinopoulos also turned to writing — five books, from war chronicles to historical and political fiction.

• "Is This Sarajevo?" Korfi · 1993 · translated into English A chronicle of the siege of Sarajevo.
• "The War Cassette" Kastaniotis · 2001 A novel based on true events of the Gulf War.
• "The Empty Wedding Dress" Kastaniotis · 2013 A historical novel about the secret love affair between Eleftherios Venizelos and Paraskevoula Bloom.
• "The Siemens Affair" Kastaniotis · 2014 A political novel based on the Siemens case.
• "It Was the Other Half-Year, You Fool!" Pedio · 2025 On the politics behind the 2015 election result.

In 2002 he was elected Mayor of Vrilissia. In 2006 the then Prime Minister, Kostas Karamanlis, put him forward as a candidate for Regional Governor of Attica (the office then known as Super-Prefect). In 2007 he was elected Member of Parliament for Athens B as a New Democracy candidate, and was re-elected in 2009 and 2012. In June 2014 he was sworn in as Minister of the Interior.

His years in local government also saw the conversion of a former naval fort into a 5.2-hectare municipal park — one of the most tangible legacies of that tenure.

In the 2015 elections he was not elected to Parliament, nor was he re-elected Mayor of Vrilissia in the 2019 municipal elections.

"Politics" in the Archive →

After 2015 he worked in the private sector and in advertising — only to return, a few years later, to where he had begun.

Since 2021 he has produced a daily three-hour live news programme on an Athens radio station. In 2024 he returned to television journalism, at Antenna TV (ANT1), covering the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Since 2025 he has worked at OPEN TV, co-presenting the weekly international-affairs programme “Status Quo”.