A Tale of Two Tonys
We meet at last. The author of the great Bread and Ashes and the long-serving weekly GT columnist who has made Georgia his home country of greatest duration. He brings a small group of fellow Brits and a Georgian guide to Hanmer house for a night, during the course of which I am able to interview him.
Tony Anderson first came to this country in 1989, so, two years before I arrived in the USSR. He has made roughly twelve visits here, so obviously the place has made a lasting impression and continues to draw him back. His wife, the well-known painter Lucy Willis, is currently showing an exhibition in the UK including some works from her only trip here with him.
Mr Anderson’s longest trip here was the one which resulted in his writing Bread and Ashes, in 1996. It took him primarily through Svaneti, Racha, Khevsureti and Kazbegi, and involved getting mugged in Svaneti (where else, in those years?) and losing all his money to the thieves. T’was also the time when the entire Svaneti road was desperately bad, all the way up from Zugdidi, even in Mestia town itself. Fond memories for us both!
He was also connected with a theater group in the UK, and arranged an exchange with the Rustaveli Georgian theater company before Gamsakhurdia’s election, the huge crowds on Rustaveli Avenue inspiring him to make the Bread and Ashes walk “to understand it all”. Georgia became one of his life’s main themes, and he has also been a director of the British-Georgian Society and run FOARIG, Friends of Academic Research in Georgia. There is an annual Georgia Studies Day in London, attended by around a hundred people, more of Tony’s work.
And... There is the book, the manuscript of the travel writings of one Margaret Chambers from the early 20th century. This typed original he and two colleagues of his great friend, Marika Didibulidze, found squirreled away in the depths of the Royal Geographic Society in London. It details her travels in this country, including to Becho and Etseri, so its publication will be of considerable interest to me and my friends and neighbours here. Next week, some excerpts!
Margaret Cambers also painted and either took or was in many photographs concurrent with her travels. Tony aims to have a complete dual-language version of the book produced, along with good quality reproductions of as many of the pictures as possible. At the moment he is at the fundraising stage, and I wish him much success, with a vested interest, it must be said. Such finds as this book are a rare delight.
Another project of Tony’s, when he isn’t accompanying tourists here on special custom tours, is the compiling and editing of a book on British travellers to the UK from the Middle Ages to the present. Here the famous and the not so famous will be introduced and quoted, the relationships between our two countries delved into to some considerable depth. This, too, will be a valuable addition to literature on Georgia in English.
Naturally, the two Tonys became fast friends in no time at all, and intend to develop this friendship to their mutual benefit and hopefully that of their shared country of interest. This visit was a short one, rather rushed by circumstances, but time will allow more such in the near future. I am reassured to know that such people have this country as an orbit point.
Tony Hanmer runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1300 members, at
www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
Tony Hanmer