Yi-Hwa Hanna chats with Bettany Hughes, a historian, broadcaster, and bestselling author about travelling the world to tell stories.

You’ve travelled across continents to research your books, shows and films – from Turkey, Greece, and Egypt to Afghanistan and beyond. How has being on the ground, walking the same landscapes as ancient civilizations, shaped the way you tell their stories?

It’s totally essential. As a historian, I can’t write history unless I go to the place where it happened. It feels like that’s a respectful thing to do, both in terms of the people whose long past you’re telling, but also for the people who are the guardians of that history now. You get to meet them, and talk to them, and hear their perspective on what you’re doing. And geography makes history, so it also means you can stand on a battlefield and feel certain things there – for instance, I can imagine why there was a particular wind that scared people [at a specific point in the past], or you can imagine looking over the borders and boundaries and suddenly seeing snowcapped mountains at a distance. You can imagine the ambition of wanting to travel to explore that in the past. So, it’s vital for me to “go to street”. And I love it. Luckily, I like travelling!

What first sparked your fascination with history?

I think it was a mixture of things. I went to see the Tutankhamun exhibition when I was five years old, and I was just blown away by the idea that all these fairy tales I’d heard of – of the Boy King, with his “fairy gold”, and his mysterious death – were true. It was also partly because when I was at school, then later, studying at university, I noticed that there were lots of female historians, but not many who were being published or who are being allowed the chance to do television programmes. So, I very actively thought I wanted to change that perspective.

How essential is the role of storytelling in history, in your opinion?

It is totally essential. We are a storytelling species – we understand the world by telling stories about it. If you look at the world 40,000 years ago, we were creating abstract art of, for example, a person with a lion’s head – because somehow that helped people understand who they were in the world. I’ve just come back from central Anatolia. where there are these amazing discoveries at Karahan Tepe and Göbekli Tepe, where there are literally stone storyboards, almost like cartoons. So, stories really, really matter. And I think they do even more now. You want to give a voice to the people whose stories aren’t normally heard, but also to ensure that what we’re delivering is authentic and factual – because since we’re hardwired to love stories, it also means we can believe mistruths or misinformation when it’s delivered to us persuasively. History is constantly walking that balancing line of helping us understand the bigger story, but [still] keeping the factual truths accurate and authentic.

You recently participated in the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, where one of your talks, “A Historian’s Guide to Surviving the 21st Century” asked what lessons the past could offer for navigating todays’ crises – how history could help us understand and prepare for change in an age of information overload. Tell us more.

It’s a really pertinent question. One of the great values of being a historian is that you take the very long view. I can also see that through time; there has hardly been a generation that hasn’t thought that the world was about to end. We’ve always been anxious, whether it’s been the plague, the pandemic, warfare, starvation. And we write about [these things]. [Yet] we’ve had lots of chances self-extermination, and we haven’t done that yet. Clearly, since you and I are sitting here talking right now! So [in that sense], there is actually something very hopeful about that big sweep of history. What we have to do – since, as you said, we have such an overload of information now – is that we can choose not to look at it. I mean, that’s the reality. We can choose to just be with friends and family for an evening without picking up our phones. The device might be required to physically get us there, with a dropped pin to follow for example, but once there, we can choose to have three or four hours without it. I think the most important thing we have as a species is that we can always leave avenues of choice open – so that’s what we’ve got to do, on a macro and a micro scale.

One of your other talks was on the Seven Wonder of the Ancient World. Why do you think these monuments still captivate us all these years later, and what do they tell us about human ambition today?

Isn’t it interesting that we all know about the phrase “the seven wonders of the ancient world”, and the names of some of them are – yet while we may not know what they all are, we do know that they matter? It tells me something big and important. As a species, we can now recognise that we have symbolic inheritance – that we’re physically born with memory within our genes, and we’re physically born understanding the inheritance of what our ancestors created. And this list is a very particular list of seven places that were set down in Alexandria around 2,300 years ago. They’re huge – it’s kind of all about scale for these seven wonders. And I don’t look at them with rose-tinted spectacles, but what they do prove is that we really value creating wonder. We value the possibility of collaborating, so that we can realise beyond the potential of the individual… that we can join together to generate extraordinary things, at least, because they’re the ultimate acts of collaboration. They also tell us that as a species, we really really want to create wonder. We want to go visit and witness these things, and we want to share our stories of what wonderful thing. I see that in times both good and bad, throughout the story of our journey. During very tough times, we create beautiful works of art, even though we may be starving. It really matters to us that to be suffused with awe is something that we positively enjoy – and that’s what these wonders are, just seven examples of awe.

Travel to places with historical value is trending. In some cases, it’s a pushback against the rise of AI and the increasing digital demands of today’s world, and in others, the result of greater investment to preserve these places from global tourism authorities. Why do you think modern travellers are seeking a deeper connection with the worlds’ historical sites?

I think there’s something biological there – we’re creatures of memory, so we actually know that memory and heritage matters. In a world full of AI and virtual creations, there’s this incredible haptic thing that you are looking at the one whatever it’s at a place like AlUla, or, for instance, the one tomb that’s standing in that particular angle in the desert. There’s something unique about that kind of experience. We also do love connecting with other people. We can look at those and know they were created by human hands 2,000 years ago, and treasure that connection across time and space. It’s another thing that’s built to last, and it’s another way of connecting. I remember a moment when the year 2000 was coming up – at the time, many people said the past is irrelevant, and all the answers lie in the future. Then we got to the millennium and suddenly realised that that isn’t the case – we still need that foundation. So I think [this trend] is an appreciation of the depth and breadth of our roots.

What’s the first thing you usually do when you arrive at a new destination?

I always take a moment to smell the air. If I go into a hotel room and the windows are closed, I’ll immediately open them – or I’ll go back down onto the street. It’s something I almost need, in a sensory way, to understand the place I’ve come to – and smell is a huge part of that.

What’s your go-to choice of inflight entertainment?

Flights are my total guilty pleasure. I love working and writing or researching and travelling during the rest of my time – but I will sit on a flight and try to watch movies. It’s my complete joy, and I’m very upset that you can now get wifi on planes, because it used to be the classic thing – it was like a pod [where that was all there was]! So, I catch up on movies inflight. But I actually think that’s very important for me, because I’m in the business of making factual films and documentaries, so it’s important for me to see what the world wants to see. I’ll often start with a documentary, then watch a movie. I like independent cinema, and I love thrillers and action movies. I think maybe it’s to do with growing up with actors, but I understand the huge amount of effort and creativity it takes to create this other world. Where are you headed next? Back to London, to change my clothes, then start a new series on the greatest cities on earth – what makes a great city, what it is historically and culturally, what it means now. That’s going to be one of my next big adventures. So, if any of your readers want to share their city with me, let me know – I’m right at the beginning of this project, so if you’d like to tell me why you think I should come see your city, feel free to reach out!

THREE THINGS YOU ALWAYS PACK

A tube of vitamin C (because if I’m unwell, or someone else is unwell, as least you can feel that you’re getting better if you have some effervescent Vit C!) A moisturiser (it doesn’t have to be an expensive one – just any kind of moisturizer – because I always seem to end up in deserts) A scarf or a skirt (because the remote desert or remote mountain doesn’t have any shops like that).

ULTIMATE BUCKET LIST DESTINATION

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It’s the only one of the seven wonders I’ve not been to.

Follow @bettany_hughes to learn more about her journey.

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