Gill Greef – How it all began…
I’m delighted to be able to partner with Hellene School Travel selling the guidebooks I originally wrote for my own students as we explored the Classical world. I really loved being able to share my excitement with students on those trips and I still love to be able to share my enthusiasm through the sale of the guidebooks. How did it all begin?
My love affair with Classics began on a family trip to Greece, the only child in a party of 32. You might have thought that for a 12 year old this was not the most suitable introduction but somehow I was thrilled by what I saw – the Lion Gate at Mycenae, the palace at Knossos, the Parthenon with its up-curved base (guide’s hat invisible at the other end of the stylobate). Perhaps that too was where my love affair with architecture began. I was hooked and when I was asked by our dashing blonde young courier (yes, I remember him now!) whether I would learn Greek when I was older, I had no hesitation in answering “yes”. I hadn’t even started Latin then.
My first few weeks of Latin were hardly auspicious; my father who had learned a little Latin at school checked my homework one evening and thought it looked fine – I got B minus and never asked him again though his delight and pride at my later successes never failed. I soon discovered Latin was a subject I could do and had no hesitation in choosing to study Greek when the opportunity arrived and then to choose Latin and Greek as A level subjects and to opt to study Classics at Southampton University.
My student days began to show me that my inclination was towards archaeology, history and architecture rather than literature but that is another story…
