{"id":28682,"date":"2020-10-27T11:58:03","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T11:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.com\/?p=28682"},"modified":"2020-10-27T11:58:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-27T11:58:03","slug":"the-thrilling-corners-of-greece-that-inspired-victoria-hislop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/the-thrilling-corners-of-greece-that-inspired-victoria-hislop\/","title":{"rendered":"The thrilling corners of Greece that inspired Victoria Hislop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novelist Victoria Hislop has found \u2018the storytelling spark\u2019 in Crete, Thessaloniki and the streets of Athens. Who better to ask for an inspirational guide to their highlights?<\/em><\/p>\n

(from The Telegraph, October 27, 2020<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

G<\/span>reece has become more than a second home \u2013 it has also given me a second citizenship. In September, I swore my oath of allegiance to the Hellenic Republic and the day of the ceremony included meetings with the president, the prime minister and the general secretary of internal affairs. I am now the proud possessor of Greek identity.<\/p>\n

Many of my Greek friends, smiling sardonically, tell me that I will now stop loving this country. A standard position in Greece is to be immensely patriotic but also deeply jaded and critical of everything about it. So far, I have felt no such transformation. The landscapes, the history and the people still provide constant inspiration.<\/p>\n

With six novels behind me and 10 stops on each book tour, I have travelled the length and breadth of the country promoting the Greek editions. I have been to the north, to the Albanian border where bears sometimes appear, to the east (where Turkey is in view) and down to the southernmost town in Crete on the Libyan sea.<\/p>\n

The contrasts in landscape and culture are fairly extreme \u2013 mountains, plateaux, rivers, lakes, hot springs, volcanoes; Greece has it all. It\u2019s problematic to talk about my favourite places because I have thousands and I have not found anywhere lacking its own idiosyncratic charm.<\/p>\n

As I write, I am sitting in the terrace caf\u00e9 of the Acropolis Museum. It\u2019s early October and I keep glancing up at the Parthenon\u2019s golden stones under a blue sky, grateful for the light breeze. The temple is iconic and for many it represents some of the best things about this country, not least beauty and the aesthetic principles that the West have followed for millennia.<\/p>\n

(read the full article at the Telegraph<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novelist Victoria Hislop has found \u2018the storytelling spark\u2019 in Crete, Thessaloniki and the streets of Athens. Who better to ask for an inspirational guide to their highlights? (from The Telegraph, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,446],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greece","category-news","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28688,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28682\/revisions\/28688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}