It’s all Greek to Victoria

AWARD-winning author Victoria Hislop’s love for Greece and its people is no holiday romance, but a long-lasting, passionate affair. She has even learnt Greek so she can conduct interviews in that language in a country that has taken her to its heart.

Two of her three novels have been set in Greece (the other in Spain). The Island, her first fiction book published in 2005, was a Sunday Times paperback chart-topper that sold more than two million copies worldwide, saw her named as newcomer of the year at the Galaxy British Books Awards and winning the Richard and Judy Summer Read competition.

Her second novel, The Return, was another chart-topper. Her third novel, The Thread, is published in paperback this month. She’s also published a short story collection, One Cretan Evening.

She and her husband, Private Eye editor and BBC1’s Have I Got News For You regular Ian Hislop, now have a second home in Crete. She’s famous in Greece, not just for her books but also the TV series based on The Island.

“It’s quite a small country, about ten million people, so it’s a much smaller country to be wellknown, but I do get recognised in the street which seems strange and would never happen in the UK. I was a extra on the TV show, but I don’t think they recognise me from that. It’s from my other TV appearances,” she says.

She has a Greek teacher in London and still does a couple of hours language studies each week.

“I do all my interviews and PR In Greek, and I can take meetings in Greek. I don’t yet read novels, but I can hold my own in conversation.

There are various milestones in learning, certainly in Greek, and for me was when I looked at the Greek language and it was ‘help, these letters are different’. That took me time to accept.

“Learning the language changed my relationship with the country in a way because I felt so much closer. When The Island was made into a TV series I spent a lot of time there working on the production. It became more and more important to me as a place. A place full of friends more than anything.”

Greece is going through tough times with the economy at the moment. Her novel The Thread reflects some of the problems that were beginning to become apparent. “It’s very serious what’s happening. It’s a very fragile situation,” she says. “I would say that 95 per cent of my friends out there are not working and many who are working haven’t been paid by their companies for months.”

HISLOP says it came “as a bit of a surprise” to find herself writing fiction because it wasn’t something she ever planned. Yet, her first novel, 2005s The Island, was selected by The Times as one of the 100 books that defined that decade.

She working in publishing and then PR before having children led to a change of direction. She worked as a freelance journalist, including travel writing. Then she wrote The Island and found something she liked doing. “I realised how enjoyable it was and we are very lucky if we enjoy our work,” she says.

That enjoyment extends to meeting readers.

Two or three days away at a time at public events is great for her. “When people ask if I enjoy it, I feel I am meant to say no because some authors really don’t like it, but I really do. It’s nice to meet people because I spend a lot of time on my own in a room writing,” she says.

A trip to Spinalonga generated the idea for the first novel. “If there’s a chicken and egg starting point it was going to that place and wanting to write something fictional about that,” she says. “If I had not been there on that particular day in that particular place I might never have written fiction.”

Continuing to write fiction wasn’t a problem.

“People said, ‘oh, second novel, how awful’ as if I had an illness or something and I never really knew what they were talking about. I didn’t have to write a second one, I wrote another because I had another idea. I can’t keep saying it was torture.

“If I had to write a novel once a year, which some people do, I would be constantly hunting for ideas. You’re like a demon with a fishing net always on the lookout for ideas. But they seem to land in my lap almost.

“I’m beginning to research my fourth book, another Greek story. To me, there’s a lot of inspiration in Greece so you don’t have to look very far. Things that people take for granted in their own culture seem different to an outsider.”

And what, you can’t help wondering, of husband Ian’s influence on her work? “I very consciously didn’t want to bother him with it because he, to quite a large extent, doesn’t bring his work home with him. He’s very disciplined especially since he had children. I felt I should do the same thing,” she explains.

“Because he also writes he might have had a lot of suggestions, but I thought I want to do this on my own. So he didn’t see it until it was finished.”

• Victoria Hislop appears at the 47th Harrogate International Festival as part of the Raworths Literature Series at Wesley Chapel on July 6. Box Office 01423-502116 harrogateinternationalfestivals.com