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Novelist Victoria Hislop tells Miranda Moore about being a language
'nerd' and why she considers learning Greek to be her life's work
V
ictoria Hislop's love of Greece runs
through her eight novels – every one
of them set in the country. So much so
that she was awarded honorary Greek
citizenship in July for promoting the nation's
history and traditions. Though I knew of her
reputation as a dedicated hellenophile, I was
less aware of her passion for languages when
we spoke in October. I discovered a bestselling
novelist who describes her life's work as the
study of Greek – who grew up speaking French
with the English girl next door and still plays
make-believe with her grown-up son (the actor
Will Hislop) to teach him Greek. ("He could get
a book if he wanted to, but this is a fun thing.")
How her love of Greece began has been
well-documented: as a 17-year-old with little
experience of trips abroad, she was taken to
Greece by her recently divorced mother Mary,
and instantly fell in love with the place.
Coming from a fairly "typical" family in Kent,
who holidayed on the South Coast and were
not particularly interested in languages, it was
all very exotic. Though she returned to Greece
often as she embarked on adult life, she didn't
have much of a connection with Greek until
much later. "At the time, the language
seemed so completely alien because of the
alphabet. A privately educated person might
have had fun transliterating, but I hadn't done
Ancient Greek at school. I didn't think there
was any possibility of speaking it."
This is slightly surprising when you consider
Hislop's early aptitude for languages. She
choose to speak not just French with her
friend, Angela, on the walk to school, but also
German and Spanish when their grammar
school introduced those languages. "It sounds
so funny now but we absolutely did this, and
From geek to Greek
