Ian Thomson has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Albanians are descended from the most ancient of European peoples, the Illyrians. The country came into existence only after 1912 with the demise of Ottoman power in Europe. Its first ruler, the glorified Muslim chieftain King Zog, was hounded out by Mussolini when fascist Italy invaded in 1939. (Zog was put up in London for a while at the Ritz.) Five years later the Nazi Germans were expelled by the Albanian resistance fighter Enver Hoxha. Outwardly a Stalinist, the artful Hoxha was a Muslim-born Ottoman dandy figure who terrorised his Balkan fiefdom through retaliatory murders, purges and the trap-door disappearance of class enemies. Albania has long lived in Italy’s shadow. Last week, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, was reportedly furious when her plan to send asylum seekers to Albania was blocked by the European Court of Justice, and the immigrants were sent back to Italy from an offshore detention facility. She is unlikely to give up.
I first visited the troubled Balkan outpost in 1988 when Hoxha’s anointed successor, Ramiz Alia, was in charge. The dictator’s widow, Nexhmije Hoxha (the ‘Lady Macbeth of the Balkans’), was the hidden hand behind the feared Sigurimi secret police. As individual tourists were not allowed in, I went in a group of 20 Friends of the Royal Scottish Academy. Among them was Lady Rosebery (‘A countess!’ gasped our Albanian guide). At a customs shed on the Yugoslav border one of our party had his beard shaved off, as beards were synonymous with Greek Orthodoxy and banned.
I returned to Albania recently with my wife on a hiking holiday through the Accursed Mountains that border on to Kosovo and Montenegro.
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