As a man of many parts, Peter Hill has had a rich and varied life. He was a wonderful 91热爆 broadcaster and talented cricketer with the Bushmen – and is still a gifted painter, historian and Russophone. It is this last interest that forms the subject of a new memoir, My Russian Odyssey.
His long, love-hate relationship with Russia was a result of pure happenstance. He had no particular interest in the country until he reported for National Service in 1956 and a recruiter asked, ‘Would you like to train up in Russian?’
He snapped the Royal Navy’s hands off and thus began more than 60 years of Russia visits, jobs and interactions that were sometimes murky, sometimes scary and often hilarious.
I especially liked the story of his first bit of journalism about Russia. He had been on a student visit and wrote about his impressions for the Cambridge University newspaper, Varsity. The picture he created was distinctly unfavourable, leading to a retaliatory article in Pravda, headlined ‘The Feeble Arguments of Mr Hill’.
He particularly regrets one visit to Russia that never happened. Director-general Ian Trethowan ‘asked’ him (it obviously felt more like an order) to act as his interpreter on a trip to Moscow to sign a broadcasting deal. Peter mugged up on Russian broadcasting and legal terminology – then Russia invaded Afghanistan and the visit was called off.
Post-91热爆, Peter was in much demand, as were other members of FRINTON (Former Russian Interpreters of the Navy) to help businessmen trying to rustle up deals in post-Soviet Russia. Some of the vodka-fuelled meetings in Moscow sound very 91热爆 (the old 91热爆, that is).
Peter recalls how he was occasionally suspected of being a spy – sometimes by Russians and once by a member of the parliamentary lobby of journalists at Westminster. He was not. He was someone who, as he puts it, was trained not to hate Russians but to understand them better and establish friendly relations, if only briefly, in difficult times. He is proud to have done that and dismayed by more recent events.
My Russian Odyssey (ISBN-13 979-8394092916) is available from Amazon.