Q & A with Victoria Hislop

1. Was your childhood ambition always to be a writer? If not, what inspired you to start writing?

I always enjoyed words - I think from an early age - but writing was not a career I considered until I was in my thirties. 

My grandfather was a journalist (he eventually became editor of Hansard, the official parliamentary record) and all his brothers were journalists, and my father left school at fourteen and went to work on a local paper - so there is definitely a writing 'gene'.  As for creative writing, I remember winning a story competition at school when I was eight, but from about the age of fourteen it didn't occur to me to write anything fictional.

2. What do you enjoy most about writing?

It is 'free' in every way - not just because all you need to do it is a bit of scrap paper and a chewed pencil!  The real freedom of it is that we are free to write pretty much anything we desire and to allow the imagination to roam where it pleases.  And it's something we can do just for ourselves - it doesn't necessarily require the approval or involvement of other people.  So that's what I like about writing really, that it gives me a huge amount of pleasure in itself and if other people read what I have written and say they enjoyed it or found it interesting, then that's a bonus.

3. Which writers do you admire?

Shakespeare is really the best of everything, not only in form and structure, but in his understanding of human nature and he is never, ever boring!  Moving closer to the present day, I love Emily Bronte – sadly she only had time for one novel, but her poetry is very wonderful too.  And then in the 20th century, I think George Orwell is a fantastic writer – very pithy, but full of ideas.   Of writers who are still living – and writing – Ian McEwan is fairly unbeatable for powerful writing, again often very economical in his style, but absolutely precise about what he wants to say.  I love Maggie O'Farrell, Margaret Attwood and Melvyn Bragg.

4. Which authors have influenced your writing the most and why?

I couldn't actually say who has influenced my writing.  Any influence is probably subliminal.  There isn't anyone that I would say – 'I am going to try and write like them' – I think that's probably a very bad idea.  And even the 'genre' I write in doesn't help me to find an answer – I’m not sure even what I would call it, so I can't even make any comparisons there.  I think it takes someone else to answer that question – a reader who is perhaps reminded of someone else's style.  Rather like, with karaoke.... people say I sound like Karen Carpenter – but I would never have known that myself because you can't hear yourself in the same way that others can!

5. What was the last good book you read?

Rose Tremain's The Road Home which just won the Orange prize and a few weeks before that I picked it as the winner for the Good Housekeeping book awards.  It is quite simply a flawless novel.  The characters are believable and engaging, the plot is brilliant, you really care about what happens to everyone, it is well researched, the dialogue is convincing, it is full of humanity, I could go on and on...

6. Where and when do you like to write?

I especially like to write in the geographical places that I have picked for my novels – Spain and Crete – as then I am absolutely immersed in the atmosphere of those places.  But it's generally not possible for me to be away for more than a week at a time – so I take hundreds of pictures when I am there and surround myself with them on big boards – and I play music all the time I am writing too.  My best time for writing is after midnight when it's dark and quiet and I know the phone won't ring and no one will need anything – and there are no distractions, not even cloud shapes!

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