Victoria married Private Eye editor Ian Hislop on 16 April 1988 in Oxford; the couple have two children, Emily Helen (born 1990) and William David (born 1993). [8]

The story takes place in Famagusta/Ammochostos and as the Greek name implies, a city buried in sand.It’s been like that for 40 years and it’s something which is still not resolved. And I think it has relevance at the moment.” I know for a fact that people marking that paper in our finals must have wondered why we were all saying the same thing. The Lowther visit is Victoria’s only northern tour date, so it’s a rare chance to hear her speak about her new book, The Sunrise.

People who know me, know that I adore Greece. I love visiting, I love the food, the people, the history, the culture. It is this love that brought me to Victoria Hislop's novels and The Island, sent on the leper island of Spinalonga just off the coast of Crete is one of my favourite stories. I also enjoyed The Thread, set in Thessaloniki and her collection of short stories The Last Dance and Other Stories. She also also written about the Spanish Civil War in her novel The Return, but I wasn't so keen on that one.Ian is much more intellectual than I am. At university, he used to lend people his essays so they could copy them. He should have rented them out at 50p a go because it would have paid his bar bill. Victoria, who speaks fluent Greek after having lessons for several years, says foreign climes prove an irresistible draw – and they are where she gets her inspiration. Hislop hasn't of course been into Famagusta - no one may, even now - but has stood near the barbed wire and imagined what life was like there, then and now, with her usual gift for presenting bits of history most of us are unfamiliar with from a fictional point of view." - Independent on Sunday (UK) The plastic and barbed wire that has been wrapped around this city is more clearly visible here. I walked right next to it to take these pictures of some derelict hotels. It’s not hard to imagine what an idyllic place this must have been to stay – hotel residents could step from the foyer directly onto the sand. And with soft sand such as this, it must have seemed like paradise. The beach faces due east so they would have woken to the most spectacular sunrise each day visible from those windows. This was what inspired me to call my imaginary hotel (which also gives the novel its name) ‘The Sunrise’.

It takes him about two days to go through it, and at the end of the two days he gives me a tutorial. It’s not problematic. We were at the same university doing the same degree [English] at the same time,” she says. I thought I was going to become an artist, get married, have children and have a calm, easy life, going to the beach every day,’ she reflects. ‘But what happened in 1974 totally altered the course of my family’s life.’

The tourists are unaware of the political rumblings in Cyprus. Hidden from them is the violence, the simmering unrest. The locals are aware of the battles within the Government, and the memories of battles between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots are never far from their minds. The places I describe are also real. The story mostly takes place in Famagusta (known as Ammohostos to the Greeks). I wanted to share some images of this place, firstly some postcards that show the city as it was, and then a series of photographs which I took last summer. Savvas Papacosta has big plans. Not content with one hotel he has now found the perfect spot to build another combining breathtaking views with opulent luxury. It is 1972 and Famagusta is a popular holiday destination. With his glamorous wife Aphroditi by his side, Savvas is determined to make The Sunrise the hotel to beat. Whilst her husband is fully occupied with his new venture, Aphroditi is bored and feels redundant so she starts to seek happiness outside of the confines of her marriage. The Ozkans are on the same wrung of the ladder and have a lot in common with the Georgious, a factor that comes in handy when they're both marooned in a no-man's-land as the Turkish advance, leading to some extraordinarily tense moments and an explosive climax.