Then they would ask, “What do you think of our government?” — which was more tricky. They said, “We’re fed up because there are no jobs.” We didn’t get into a no-holds-barred conversation; unpleasant things happen to people in Iran, and we didn’t know who might be listening.
Syria was wonderful, too. On the way to Damascus we stopped at a humble roadside cafe for tea. The proprietors pointed into the distance, where there were tents and a flock of sheep: that was where they lived. They were shepherds, but with their own cafe. Then one asked, “What is this disease in your country where the cows fall down?” They’d heard about mad-cow disease by listening to the BBC. We asked if they ever had the same problems. “Oh yes,” the shepherd replied, “but if our sheep fall down, we eat them.” Clearly their attitude to scrapie is rather more relaxed than ours! We also visited crusader castles, and Palmyra, a complex of Roman temples in the desert. There were beautiful carvings and heads scattered across the ground — people were wandering all over them.
It was similar when we went to Cambodia three years ago — but there was so much pillaging there. We were shown Angkor by somebody from the archeological service, who took us into a guarded compound stuffed with buddhas and sculpted snakes. Much of the theft was being done by the army. Armed soldiers would drive up with lorries and say to the curators, “Get out of the way — we’re taking this... and that.”
It all went to Bangkok through middlemen — as we discovered when we got there. A man at an antiques stall asked if we were interested in buying a statue. He showed us photos of one of the temples at Angkor and said, “If you like something, we can get it for you.”
I married Ann when we came down from Cambridge in 1960, and we had a three-week honeymoon in Sicily. We flew overnight to Rome and took a taxi straight to St Peter’s. It just seemed a wonderful place to start married life. Then we flew to Palermo and drove for six hours on a windy coastal road to Taormina — we arrived more dead than alive. The only good bit about the drive was that we found a small town on the north coast of Sicily called Tusa.
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Our worst holiday was in Czechoslovakia, visiting family soon after we got married. It was an important political experience because we saw first-hand what life under Communism was like.
Just getting into the country was unpleasant: we almost got arrested over some knitting. My mother, in her wisdom, had stashed some blue wool behind the back seat of the car. A guard pulled out the wool triumphantly and said, “You may not take this into the country: it is forbidden.” My wife said facetiously, “They are going to use it themselves — look, the wool matches his eyes.” The guard shouted, “That woman has committed a provocation. I warn you against further provocations!” In 1961, “provocation” in Communist countries was really bad stuff; we were very scared.
Every village had a loudspeaker system, so party bosses could broadcast the latest order. People were desperate, and the tragic thing was that they were expecting that, sooner or later, the West would free them. My family’s standard of living was just acceptable, because everybody was entitled to slaughter a pig or cow and keep the proceeds. They also made their own slivovitz — plum brandy. I still have a bottle and it is, as the Irish say, “powerful fierce” .
I’m convinced that my grandfather, who died in his bed at 89, owed his longevity to his daily breakfast: sour cream mixed with garlic, and a shot of home-made slivovitz.