Photo © Nikos Vatopoulos

For Victoria Hislop, falling in love with the Mediterranean was not a slow burn, but something akin to standing under a hairdryer. ‘I remember the aeroplane doors opening,’ she says, ‘and this hot wind unlike anything I’d felt in Britain – this unbelievable warmth.’ She was fourteen years old, and had only known seaside holidays in Bognor Regis or Felpham in West Sussex (‘We used to rent a flat above a shop owned by a man with a glass eye who terrified me, and we’d sit on the beach, cold and wrapped up and feeling uncomfortable.’) But then a friend of the family suggested taking a holiday flat in Malta; trips to Minorca and Athens followed, and there was no looking back: ‘I was so happy – and now I can’t keep away.’

It has been a profitable passion. In the last nine years she has written three bestselling novels set in southern Europe – two of them (The Island and The Thread) about Greece, the other (The Return) about Spain. The Island alone has sold more than two million copies, as well as spawning a 26-part series on Greek television. Part of the proceeds has been spent on a house on Crete which she owns with her husband Ian, the editor of Private Eye, and another substantial portion on the Greek language lessons she has been taking for the past three and a half years.

‘I can’t yet pick up a Greek novel and read it,’ she says, ‘but I can do a live television interview at seven in the morning. For the first few visits to Greece to promote The Island I had a translator, and I hated it: I felt as if everything I said was going through a gauze. Also, there was an elderly man on Crete who was a good friend of mine – someone who’d had leprosy – and I thought, “If I don’t get on with it I’ll never be able to have a proper conversation with him.” He died last year, very sadly, but by the end I could visit him in hospital without anyone else being there, and that was a great reason to have learnt.’

As this story suggests, success has not given Hislop any airs or graces. She radiates cheerful, down-to-earth Britishness, albeit with an overlay of Continental chic. Today she looks formally elegant – simple silver jewellery, bright blue dress, knee-length boots – having come from a memorial service for another celebrated Hellenophile, Patrick Leigh Fermor.

‘There was nothing in Greek,’ she reports, ‘which made me sad. There was so much Greek poetry that he knew and would have loved. My ear was crying out for it.’

For her Spanish novel, she learnt a different kind of language – dance. ‘Granada, where I set The Return, has a very strong flamenco culture,’ she explains. ‘Every lamppost is covered in posters advertising a concert, usually in some dingy basement bar. It’s  a really vibrant place: you could never be bored there. It has a huge amount of tradition, and amazing food, and there is a great sense of a city in a landscape. If someone told me I had to spend the rest of my life there, I’d be very contented.’

What draws Hislop as a novelist, however, is the sense that ‘so much is hidden’ beneath the surface of the beautiful places she writes about. In The Island it was the story of a leper colony; in The Return and The Thread, the experience of families divided by civil war. ‘The Return grew out of seeing these elderly people wandering around and thinking to myself, “They lived through all of that, yet there is no monument to the people who died fighting for the Republic. Why not?” Which was very  naïve, of course, because Franco was in control for so long, and he was the one who set up the monuments and wrote the history of the Civil War.’

In Greece, when writing The Thread, she found the legacy of internal strife closer to the surface: ‘There’s a lot of talk of “betrayal”. My Greek publisher was worried that I was even alluding to it in the book, because anything to do with the Civil War is like sticking your fingers in an electric socket and standing in a bucket of water – so I wrote it very, very carefully.’

You certainly would not expect the inheritors of such dark histories to be grateful to a foreigner for putting them in the spotlight; but according to Hislop, the response in Greece has been overwhelmingly positive. ‘I get a lot of messages on my website, and they say really nice things – very emotional, because the Greeks can’t hold things back. They’re grateful because I’ve given them detail that they didn’t know, and they’re happy that their story is being delivered to them in a relatively simple form, which is what my novels are: they’re not complex.’

The emails she ignores are those from people encouraging her to use their family stories as material. ‘I think that’s a very dangerous thing to do, and a very dull one,’ she says. ‘Where’s the imagination involved? Every single one of my characters is completely out of my head.’

She feels deeply for the Greeks in their present economic predicament. ‘Owning a house there brings you closer to them: you look at your electricity bill and think, “Oh, there’s a huge great tax that’s been added on.” There are a lot of people who are struggling, and one shares their frustration.’

Might she choose a subject nearer to home for her next book? ‘It definitely won’t be set in Britain, I can tell you that. I remember very little from my English degree except “Drama is conflict” – and there are no such dramatic starting points in British twentieth-century history. Also, I’m slightly afraid of writing about British people: I’m not sure I’d do it very well. With Greece I feel I’ve built up a bank of knowledge – and I’m fascinated by it still.’

Original interview at Europe in the UK

(Be patient… although the introduction, and Peter’s first words are in Greek, the speech itself is in English)

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The guide is  ©  the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Education and Tourism, the Municipality of Thessaloniki &  was first published by SOUL Magazine and is included here by permission.

For easy reading, click ‘Expand’ for a full screen version.

Greeks are likely most familiar with Victoria Hislop as the writer of “The Island,” an award-winning novel that was adapted for a TV series by Greece’s Mega Channel last year. While reading up on the British author, I was pleased to discover that she seems to know this country well and talks about it during her travels around the world.

The publication of her new book, “The Thread,” translated into Greek and published by Dioptra under the title “To Nima,” provided an opportunity for a conversation with the writer. In her latest novel, Hislop explores the history of 20th-century Thessaloniki, from the Great Fire of 1917 to the present day.

So prior to her arrival in Greece for a book tour with stops including Thessaloniki, Katerini, Larissa, Volos, Lamia, Patras and Athens, the author took some time to respond to a few questions about her most recent offering, as well as the Greek financial crisis and her impressions of the country in general.

How do you think readers of your previous works will respond to your latest novel? Do you believe it will stir up different emotions among your Greek readership to their foreign counterparts?

I think they will be familiar with my style and approach — that I write primarily with my heart rather than my intellect. So perhaps the same emotions will be stirred among readers. There are very sad things in this story — but also very optimistic things too. It is about survival — so that has to be optimistic.

I know that you’re very aware of the current financial crisis in Greece. What would you say is the best way to live with it?

If Britain faced the same situation as Greece, then I think we would all face it together in a united way. Yes, we would protest (we had huge strikes in the 1970s — when we only had very limited electricity — I did my homework by candlelight) but in the end we sometimes simply have to swallow our medicine — it is very bitter but it makes us better in the end. And I think that’s what has to happen here. Whatever the reasons behind this debt — there is only one way. And I hope your new prime minister will have everyone behind him. It seems to me that this is not the moment for “infighting” among politicians. The future will be better — it always is.

What made you decide to return to Greece again for your new novel?

I became fascinated by the story of the Population Exchange — and also the story of the Jews here. The fact that within only two decades, from 1923 to 1943, Thessaloniki was transformed from being a city with three equal sections of population (Christians, Muslims and Jews) to being only Christians was a very compelling one. And this seemed only the beginning of the story — the hardships that followed also drew me in and before long I had realized that there is a connection that links the events of those times with the situation of the present day.

How closely does the fiction of “The Thread” resemble actual reality?Is it based on real people and their true stories?

There are no true stories in “To Nima.” I research extensively with books (written mostly by British historians, and some translated from the Greek) and then imagined what it would have been like to live through them. So I did not interview elderly people — for me this is slightly dangerous, as a novel then becomes a work of nonfiction, and that is not my craft. Perhaps stories just as I fantasize did happen in real life — but there are no specific “life histories” to be found in the novel.

Do you think you could write a book with a happy theme?

I think in some ways, this book does have a happy theme — in that it is all about survival. Yes, there is plenty of loss, but not only that. It is about the strength and generosity of the human spirit. Just to write a story about people being happy… sounds a bit dull to me. There has to be conflict and resolution to make a good story.

Are there comparisons to be drawn between what was happening back then in Greece and how things are now?

The true events happening in the background of “To Nima” (from 1917 until 1978) were very tough and very hard to survive. And yes, there is certainly a comparison to be made — and definitely a link between what happened then and how things are now.

Do you find any similarities between Thessaloniki and Athens or any other city?

I think Salonica is fairly unique — though I haven’t visited every single Greek city yet (though it is on my agenda). But no other city ever had the title “Madre de Israel” (Mother of Israel) — or the “Jerusalem of the Balkans.” So Salonica definitely is unique in having been the home of the vast majority of Greece’s Jewish population. Geographically, Salonica is unique, with its position on the sea and all the layers of history that seem still to exist and to be visible there.

Is there one question that you wish to respond to but haven’t had a chance to yet?

Why the book is called “To Nima.” I love the Greek myth of the Moirae [the goddesses of fate who personified the inescapable destiny of man] — that the length of the “thread” of your life is predetermined, and this seemed to go well with the idea that all historical events are linked, or I could say “threaded,” together. As we would say in English, “One thing leads to another,” and I see this very clearly with the history of Greece in the 20th century — everything happening now somehow has its roots in the past. And writing this story has certainly helped my British readers see how much Greece has been through — and I hope this will make them more sympathetic too. And of course — all my female characters sew and weave in this story — so it is not just a metaphorical title! They do these activities in order to survive in a period of great hardship — and indeed to be creative too.

You successfully mix politics and history. If you were to choose politics as a profession, where would you like to be and why?

I am not sure I would survive as a politician, because I believe greatly in compromise — and I think politicians are usually very definite and very focused — and they often don’t really seem to listen to each other. I am very much a listener. Actually I think I might be a reasonable diplomat. Maybe an ambassador — that would be a marvelous career I think. And every five years I would move to a new country and learn a new language — and try to get countries to understand each other better.

You have compared your latest book to “an oriental rug.” What kind of descriptions of your work make you happy and which drive you mad?

Best criticism of my work: to put the spotlight on forgotten stories and to make readers hear forgotten “voices.” Criticism to drive me mad: in the UK I am often described as “light reading” — I suppose it‘s not such bad criticism — but I do think it trivializes.

(Victoria writing in the Telegraph, 24 Nov 2011)

Last week I saw a woman struggling along Oxford Street. She had three large hastening into another shop to buy some more.

I am ashamed to admit that this was me and as I caught sight of myself in a shop window scurrying along as though my life depended on it, I suddenly heard an inward scream: “STOP!”

Did I really need yet another pair of black trousers? One more white shirt indistinguishable from those I already own? Retail sales figures are supposedly facing a decline, but a glance down Oxford Street, where thousands of women (yes, I was by no means alone) are loaded down with giant Zara and Primark bags, makes this hard to believe. Clothes bingeing is by no means confined to women my age; my teenage daughter is at it, too. Although to some extent I envy the vast piles of clothes that stand about in her room like mountain ranges, there have been many times when I have pitied these garments for being so unloved.

Gerald Ratner, former chief executive of jewellery company Ratners Group, said that some of his earrings were “cheaper than a prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last so long” and I suspect that the same could now be said of some high street clothes. There’s huge wastefulness in buying all these cheap garments. Like a one-night stand or a holiday romance, these impulse purchases are used and then discarded. Or they’re not used at all: Sarah Farquhar of Oxfam tells me that many donated items still have their tags on.

I don’t expect my daughter – or anyone, for that matter – to get sentimental about a pair of New Look trousers, but when I was the same age I had a genuine attachment to most things in my wardrobe. Why? I had made most of them myself.

I grew up in a house where making clothes and wearing hand-knit jumpers was the norm. My grandmother sat knitting every evening and most of our dresses were made by my mother on a manual Singer. Without a doubt, it always made me feel loved to have clothes that were made specially for me. When little girls go off now to Primark and come home with bags full of frocks for a fiver, I can’t imagine that it feels the same to wear them as the things my mother made for me.

In my first year at grammar school, I got down to the serious business of making things to wear. It seems strange now, but it was a compulsory subject and given as much time on the curriculum as Latin or history. No girl left school without first learning how to do a tailor’s tack, a button hole and three types of “ruching”. We were all familiar with threading a sewing machine and could fill a spool without getting the cotton into knots. Inexplicably I developed a passion for it and during the Laura Ashley days of the Seventies I began to turn out flower-sprigged smocks and gathered skirts as professionally made as anything that could be bought in the shops, discovering that this was the only way I could get clothes exactly as I wanted them and also that fitted. The only trousers that I have ever owned that truly fitted were those made by myself.

Whenever there was a special occasion, I preferred to make something than buy anything ready-made. My Oxford University interview was no exception. Rather than brushing up on Jane Austen, I sat at my sewing machine, and even now I’m not sure that they didn’t give me a place on account of my floral dress with self-covered buttons, expert darts and neat gathering. It was definitely superior to my analysis of Wordsworth. My first job interview was the same. I had on a suit with my own label.

When I married, I made a dress for my bridesmaid that was covered with handmade silk roses and my younger sister tells me that, 25 years on, she still has it. Then there was my “going away” outfit, a dress with a puffball skirt (worn again last year when the puffball made a brief reappearance). For me such a dress is so personal that I could never even think of throwing it away.

Sewing had a renewed importance for me when our daughter was born. When she was two months old, I made a little dress specially for her first Christmas, covered with angels. It goes without saying that everything from Mothercare was disposed of without sentimentality as she outgrew it, but the clothes I’d stitched were not. I made all her nursery accessories, including little quilts, a “cot bumper” to protect her from the rails, and curtains with bunny rabbits. By making baby things myself, it felt as if I was surrounding her with my love; how can you compare a handmade bib or a bonnet with something you’ve bought from a high street chain?

The silver lining of our wastefulness, perhaps, is that the charity shops are benefiting. “For the first time in this recession, income has gone up on the sale of clothes,” says Farquhar. Oxfam finds a home for everything that is given, whether on the international market or in recycling. So if our conscience is pricking us, at least a once-worn T-shirt can end up benefiting a charity; albeit as wall insulation.

But isn’t it time for a renaissance in handmade clothes? It’s beyond comprehension that we all flock to the same high street stores and obediently emerge with identikit outfits. Most of the things that have caused a sensation on the catwalks in London and Paris have been original and exciting, eccentric, even, but the only way that most of us can afford anything even resembling them is to buy a sewing machine and get on with making our own couture. For an outlay of less than £100 for a basic Singer, it has to be worth it – and it isn’t exactly difficult to make a straight seam.

The time and energy spent trudging around in shopping precincts buying clothes that will soon be discarded, could be spent making clothes that we like – and are unique. I gave up “junk food” a long time ago, but it’s high time to kick another bad habit: “junk fashion”.

(11 November 2011, reviewed by Laura Barnett)

Thessaloniki, May 1923: A ship docks in the harbour packed with Greek Orthodox refugees from Turkey, newly swapped for Greece’s Muslim population in one of the most painful and extensive exchanges of peoples ever attempted. Among them is five-year-old Katerina Sarafoglou; separated from her mother in their flight from Smyrna (now Îzmir), she has been adopted by another Turkish woman, Eugenia. When they are allocated a new home, Dimitri Komninos, the ambitious son of a rich, authoritarian merchant, is among their neighbours.

The eventual coming together of Katerina and Dimitri forms the backbone of The Thread (Headline Review, £18.99), the meticulously researched third novel by Victoria Hislop. The tortuous political history of Thessaloniki in the 20th century is drawn out through the deeply involving story of two families, and the friends – Jewish, Christian, Muslim – that surround them. Hislop’s fast-paced narrative and utterly convincing sense of place make her novel a rare treat.

Sunday Times

(6 November 2011, reviewed by Elizabeth Buchan)

Victoria Hislop’s The Thread gives a central role to the history of the Greek city of Thessaloniki – a melting pot of cultures, peoples and religions – by focusing on the great fire of 1917 that destroyed two-thirds of the city, and on the second world war and the difficult, often bitter aftermath.

From this fractured backdrop, painstakingly fleshed out, she plots the story of Katarina (whose family was forced to flee from Smyrna in the 1920s) and Dimitri (the son of a fascist-leaning local businessman), whose passion for each other is forced through the hoops of family opposition and war.

The result is a sweeping, magnificently detailed and ambitious saga that wrestles with the turbulence of the period Hislop covers. Her decision to let us know what happens to her star-crossed lovers at the start of the story may be a problem for some. Even so, all those who loved The Island, her hugely successful first novel, will fall on it.

The Spectator

(29 October 2011, reviewed by Daisy Dunn)

Oh what a tangled web she weaves! Victoria Hislop’s third novel, the appropriately titled The Thread, is pleasingly complex. The story traces several generations of a fictional Greek family called Komninos against the historical backdrop of the rise and fall of Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, in the 20th century. To make things even knottier, most of the characters have some connection to the textile industry, and while for some this is booming, for others it remains a labour of love.

The most fascinating element of the book develops out of the history of Thessaloniki itself. Historically, the city has an impressive heritage at stake. Tracing her foundation back to the family of Alexander the Great, she became, to the Byzantine empire, a jewel second only to Constantinople.

The catastrophic fire of 1917, which razed much of the city, is a turning point in Hislop’s story. After witnessing the destruction of their grand sea-view villa, the Komninos family is forced to take up residence in a poorer quarter — a melting pot of Christians, Muslims and Jews. The loss of much the city’s architecture is juxtaposed with a sequence of meetings and scenarios that will reverberate across future generations of this family — a likable bunch, except for Konstantinos, the monstrous father.

Hislop emerges as something of a Homeric Penelope figure, concerned to show how a thread is untied as much as tied. This helps to free The Thread from the ‘beach-read’ status of Hislop’s first two novels, The Island and The Return, also set on Hellenic shores. The second world war begins to make its impact on the city, and Dimitri Komninos, a strong-willed and abstemious fellow determined to preserve his homeland from impending destruction, decides to join the Communist ELAS. His father, a successful textile magnate with a penchant for prostitutes, dinner at eight, and fascist politics, takes umbrage, and the destructive potential of preserving a heritage comes ever more to the fore as Dimitri, an only child, seeks to salvage his relationship with his country and its people, but most of all his reclusive mannequin of a mother and her housekeeper Pavlina.

Here Hislop plays to her greatest strength, which is the portrayal of parent-child relationships. The descriptions of children, in particular, are well-observed and touching. But while the relationship between a grandson and his grandparents falls into this category, placing it on the edge of the plot seems artificial. The grandfather toys with telling his grandson his family’s story (the book’s main narrative) in this way:

Perhaps it’s time we told you more. If you are interested, that is…?
Of course I’m interested! I’ve spent my whole life half-knowing things about my father’s background and not being given answers. I think I’m old enough now, aren’t I?

replies the grandson, who is by this stage a university student. That history would certainly hold its own without such introduction.

The inset motif would, however, prove useful should the book be filmed. The Island was written into a screenplay and aired as a series on Greek television to rave reviews. I rather suspect that more global aspirations lie behind The Thread.

Hislop has done well to tell a story as diverse and tempestuous as Thessaloniki’s with such lightness of touch. The events encountered along the way are well chosen to dramatise: Nazi control, religious diasporae, patriotism. The novel’s overarching power derives from the fluidity with which these rapidly changing times are treated. Time will show that heritage can be violated, rebelled against and ignored, but that in Thessaloniki, blood isn’t always thicker than water.

The Scotsman

(Saturday 22 October 2011 taken from an interview with Lesley McDowell)

“Hislop’s view of history in her novels is, just like the writer herself, a compassionate and generous one, and possibly this is also a huge part of their appeal. The Thread is a more ambitious novel than her previous books, more expansive in its sweep of history, more controversial in its political stance. Her many, many fans will be delighted with what is her best novel yet.”

Daily Mail

“Hislop … is very good at interweaving the lives of individuals into the backcloth of great events… this is a writer of laudably high ambition and it would only take a small nudge to move her to a whole new level. Recommended”