GORDON G HALL

So you are English

Oh yes, I’m afraid so!

Have you always been a writer?

No, I was a land manager with a large landowning charity, The National Trust.

But you left the NT to establish and run a passenger boat business?

Well the NT grew up, it became sort of corporate – and I didn’t grow up so I played around with boats  instead.

What have you written?

Two novels, many poems, and several short stories and articles about Greece

So what brought you to Greece

My heart

You mean a woman?

You are most perspicacious! But that was some years ago. Since then I have fallen in love with your country.

You mean the islands, sea, sun, sex . . .

No. I mean the real Greece; mainland Greece, and her people.

Just like Lord Byron?

Oh no! He was in love with his romantic vision; a classical Greece that he wanted to revive. He cherished the myth.  Perhaps he never discovered the reality.

And you?

I love the reality! The wonderful, disorganised, outgoing, corrupt, generous, tax-evading, hard-working, politically inept, gorgeous county that is modern Greece!

And you write about The Crisis?

Sometimes. But not politico-economic stuff, that bores me! No I write ‘little’ stories, about ordinary things, about unknown but extraordinary people.

About the good things that are happening here?

Greece is full of talent, social beauty, poetry, and such personal industry, but so much of this is hidden to the outside world.