Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Thomson, Ian

Thomson, Ian

Ian Thomson is the author of Primo Levi: The Elements of a Life, and two prize-winning works of reportage, Bonjour Blanc: A Journey through Haiti and The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica. His most recent book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Journey Without End, was published in 2018.

www.ianthomson.info

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article by, [67] 7; [78] 63

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20230601093019 Ian Thomson on Eric Ambler, Slighlty Foxed 78

Before Darkness Fell

Ian Thomson walks in the footsteps of Eric Ambler’s spy novels

In the summer of 1939, my grandfather Erich Haugas took part in an international agricultural conference a thousand miles away in Budapest. He was 38 and his professional pride was flattered. As a chemist he was in charge of the Dairy Export Control Station laboratory in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. To his untravelled eyes this was the trip of a lifetime: Budapest was the last stretch of Western ‘civilization’ before the East and the closest to a west European capital that many east Europeans would get. No direct train went to Budapest: my grandfather had to take three trains through Latvia, Polish-occupied Lithuania, Poland and the Nazi vassal state of Slovakia: a round trip of 2,300 miles. Europe was very close to war, but to my grandfather the rumours of war were just that: rumours.
20200901100514 Jaan Kross by Ellen Niit - Ian Thomson on Jaan Kross, The Czar’s Madman

A Separate World

Ian Thomson on Jaan Kross, The Czar’s Madman

When I think back to that first visit of mine to Estonia in 1988, I see muted, metallic-grey tones of fog and sea; above all I remember a sense of wonder that I was finally on my way to my mother’s homeland. Ingrid was 17 when, stateless and displaced, she arrived in England in 1947, having fled westwards from the Baltic ahead of Stalin’s advancing Red Army. She had not been back to her native land since. Now, half a century later, I was sailing to the Estonian capital of Tallinn from Helsinki – a three-hour journey by ferry across the Gulf of Finland. The Independent Magazine had asked me to report on Moscow’s waning power in the Soviet Baltic. A hammer and sickle flapped red from the ship’s stern as we set sail. The air was pungent with engine oil as I walked towards the stern and watched Helsinki’s Eastern Orthodox cathedral dwindle to a dot.

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