On a cold March day in 1995, fortune blessed me. I had written to the ancient historian N G L Hammond to see if he might meet me. He was 87, so it was a long shot. Not only did I meet him (and his wife), but I was kindly treated to lunch.
After graduating from Cambridge in 1929, Nick Hammond left for Greece on the first of several extended, long-distance, cross-country walking expeditions for which he soon became famous. Something had acted to direct his interests towards Greece’s mountainous north-western region of the country, Epirus, well away from the familiar seeding-grounds of Classical civilisation. For weeks on end, he traversed this rugged country, repeatedly crossing the modern frontier of Albania (fixed only in 1923). He was to repeat this exercise annually, and by 1933 he had devoted a total of seven months to it. As a topographical historian, he believed that personal autopsy not only was the key to understanding military and other history, but could also lead to the discovery of important and unknown monuments. He adopted, along with the necessary recording of what he saw by means of notes, sketches, and photographs, the admirable practice of timing himself over each stretch of his walks – not that his timings by all accounts could be applied by ordinary mortals. Above all, he had an excellent eye for the lie of the land, something that he put into military practice behind enemy lines during the Second World War. Here, in the Plain of Thessaly, he was to disguise himself as a Vlach shepherd, as he led Greek bands against enemy targets. For his valour, he was awarded the DSO and the Greek Grand Cross of the Order of the Phoenix.
Professor Hammond wanted to hear what I made of Albania as much as I wanted to hear of how he first visited the country in 1930. A man of patrician bearing, in my memory his eyes sparkled with wry bemusement as he recalled bathing naked in the Pavllas river, only to be arrested by a baffled Albanian policeman as a spy. This was a biblical age of leaf huts, tents of woven willow, men on mules, and veiled women knitting as they walked. His voice had a sharper edge when he described the rural poverty and then Luigi Maria Ugolini, the Director of the Italian Archaeological Mission at Butrint. Ugolini, Hammond said with gruff assurance, insisted that his Vlach workmen give him a fascist salute before starting the excavations each day. I feasted on Hammond’s words, but failed to ask as many questions as I now realise I should have.
