TV Historian Bettany Hughes on the Silk Road and Greek Epics

Farida Zeynalova: Tell us about your first travel memory.

Bettany Hughes: My family’s summer drive to the south coast, particularly Kent. As a city kid, I remember the excitement of watching the streets ease into meadows and orchards, with the scent of hops and apples stealing in through the open windows. Our cat was always sick in the travel basket, or would escape and lacerate the driver and passengers as she tore around inside our Renault 16. But I knew fresh horizons and a summer of freezing, stony dips in the English Channel awaited.

FZ: What’s been your most challenging experience?

BH: It was when I was researching Odysseus and the Greek Odyssey. We were sailing from Ikaria to Mykonos across the Icarian Sea, which is famously incredibly rough. Even Homer describes it as raging like a demagogue. We’d been sailing for eight hours at night when a freak storm blew up, and we were practically vertical. We made it back, but the captain said we’d almost died. It gave me a new respect for Odysseus and all those people who made those epic journeys.

FZ: You’ve always spoken fondly about Uzbekistan. What’s the appeal?

BH: It’s at the crossroads of so many cultures and is a place where travellers have been welcomed not just for centuries, but for thousands of years. In Bukhara, I was given this tiny figure of a camel to hold. It was about 1,700 years old and the first of its kind to show a camel with a rider, carrying packs of water and goods, with a dog or cat alongside. It represented a nomad travelling the Silk Roads. What do you always pack when travelling? Lots of pants, because there aren’t many pants shops in the desert. And industrial-strength vitamin C, because if you’ve had a tough day or there’s some sort of infection going through the team, vitamin C usually sorts things out before it becomes a problem. The last thing is a notebook — it comes with me wherever I go.

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FZ: Have you been anywhere that really surprised you?

BH: Rural China. I was travelling by myself, following the trail of Confucius and studying ancient China. I was made to feel welcome wherever I went — people in tiny villages even asked me about the next episode of Downton Abbey! Azerbaijan also surprised me: it gave women the right to vote in 1918, which is incredible. Finding those positive, unexpected stories in that part of the world has been a real joy. I recently went to Sofia, and was really impressed by the layers of history there. You’ll walk through an underpass and suddenly there’s a section of late Roman wall. People really love their history and preserve it with great care.

FZ: Where’s at the top of your travel wish list?

BH: I’d love to go to Iraq. It’s one of the few places with a rich, ancient civilisation that I haven’t visited. And I want to spend more time in South America. It would be fascinating to travel inland from Cartagena, Colombia — there are some extraordinary archaeological discoveries around there.