Bestselling novelist Victoria Hislop will be visiting Haworth next week to read from and discuss her work and latest novel, The Thread. The event takes place on the evening of Thursday 5 July at 7.30pm at the West Lane Baptist Centre in Haworth, and forms part of the Parsonage's contemporary arts programme.
Victoria Hislop’s first two novels, The Island and The Return, were Sunday Times number one bestsellers and have been translated into more than twenty languages. She won the Newcomer of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2007 and the Richard & Judy Summer Read competition. Her third novel, The Thread was published in November 2011.
Victoria Hislop is a great admirer of the Brontës, especially Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and she has written the introduction for the White’s edition of the novel. She has previously described Wuthering Heights as “the book that changed me…it woke me up”.
Tickets for the event cost £6 and can be booked from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:
jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk / 01535 640188
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Bronte Society members and readers of your blog may be interested to know that householders in Lothersdale are opening their gardens to the public and Stone Gappe's are included. The event takes place on Saturday 3rd July and Sunday 4th and tickets are available at the village hall, where refreshments will be served, from 11am. All proceeds are in aid of the parish church.
Apologies. The above dates are incorrect. Unfortunately 'Drystone Radio' and the village website have advertised the incorrect dates.
The gardens are open Saturday and Sunday 7th and 8th July respectively.
Apologies again- in retribution, hopefully, I will send to you some photographs of the gardens at 'Stone Gappe'.
Victoria Hislop transported an enraptured audience far away from the leaden skies above Haworth, the frequent claps of thunder and the heavy raining beating against the windows of West Lane Baptist Centre to Greece.As she described the sea there as an amazing shade of blue, the skies always clear-dotted with magnificent clouds- her love for the country,where she has a second home on Crete,shone through.She spoke about her novels 'The Island' and 'The Thread'- both which embrace a Greek backdrop. 'The Island' was based on the small island of Spinalonga which had been the leper colony of Crete and she told how she had learned the Greek language so she was able to speak with a former leprosy sufferer, who became a great friend, and who wrote the foreward to the Greek version of the book- which was later made into a television serial.
'The Thread' deals with traumatic events in the 20th century turbulent history of the city of Thessaloniki where the people begin to be divided by war, fear and persecution. Once a city of supreme integration, where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived happily side by side, Hislop described the ultimate integration- far more powerful and strong than even inter racial marriage- the integration when children were wet-nursed by women of differing beliefs.
It was rather suprising that in the questions, fielded to the speaker by the audience, that Ian
Hislp's name- her husband and of 'Have I got News for You' fame- was not brought up until the very end. When asked if her husband shared her love of Greece she said that, being very much an Angophile- although enjoying holidays with the family on Crete- unlike her he would never live permanently away from England.
It was a most enjoyable evening. Victoria Hislop certainly invited the audience to go deeper than the package of holidays for there is much hidden beneath the beautiful places and layers of uncomfortable history are there to discover.
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