Interview: The Unspeakable Acts Of Zina Pavlou
Peter Gruner talks to Eleni Kyriacou, whose new novel is based on a real-life event – the penultimate judicial hanging of a woman in the UK
Friday, 5th January — By Peter Gruner
Eleni Kyriacou, author of The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou [Jon Cartwright]
BACK in the 1950s at Holloway women’s prison, a Hampstead granny was executed for murdering her daughter-in-law.
This was just seven months before Ruth Ellis famously became the last woman to hang in the UK.
But few have ever heard of Styllou Christofi, 53.
The grandmother was, in 1954, accused of hitting her son’s wife on the head with an ash can, strangling her and then attempting to cremate the body with paraffin in the back garden at their home in South Hill Park.
Now, however, the horrible event has inspired a new book, The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou, by Eleni Kyriacou.
Kyriacou, a former Camden resident, speaking to Review, said names have been changed in her novel, although she’s tried to keep to the facts as much as possible where crime and evidence are concerned.
Her book is about Zina, a 53-year-old mother of five, who recently arrived from Cyprus to stay with her son Michalis and his wife Hedy and their two children Anna, 8, and baby Georgie.
It’s not long before Hedy wants Zina out of the house after they have a major fall out. And when Hedy is brutally murdered, Zina is the main suspect. Evidence and motivation points to Zina and she is whisked off by police to Holloway prison (which closed in 2016) and later stands trial for murder at the Old Bailey.
Despite Zina’s insistence that she is innocent and not suffering from any mental health issues, she is finally found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
This is a gripping book, full of relatable family rows and tensions.
In real life, Christofi was the penultimate woman to be hanged in the UK. Night club hostess Ruth Ellis became, in 1955, the last woman in Britain to be executed, having been convicted of shooting her boyfriend dead outside the Magdala pub – again, in South Hill Park. Indeed, Christofi and her son and family lived in the same street.
London-born author Kyriacou, whose parents were from Cyprus, only found out about the Christofi murder at an exhibition at Scotland Yard’s Black Museum.
She said: “The publicity for Christofi, a middle-aged foreign grandma, was tiny compared with Ellis, a 28-year-old nightclub hostess.”
The heroine of Kyriacou’s book is Greek Holloway prison interpreter Eva Georgiou (based on a combination of people rather than a single translater) who becomes not just a communication lifeline for Zina but also a good friend.
Prison life for Zina is frustrating and exhausting when she can’t understand the wardens, nor they her.
Translator Eva is sympathetic because she is also the daughter of Greek immigrants who spoke no English when they arrived. Eva realises that lack of language was her parents’ undoing because if you couldn’t speak English here, you just don’t matter.
In the book Zina’s son Michalis refuses to visit his mum in prison, despite appeals from the prison governor, and there are no other visitors.
Eva decides to became a volunteer visitor as well as a translator to spend more time with Zina.
She goes to Camden Library for a book in Greek to help keep Zina occupied. She gets The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls. It’s something Zina, with her rural childhood, will understand as it’s about children’s adventures on farms in the Mid West of America.
Kyriacou’s novel begins with Zina, travelling from her small rural village home in Cyprus (described as 50 years behind the times) to Michalis’s rented flat in Hampstead.
Zina comes from a poor background where she worked on fields and was forced at 14 to marry a much older man. She’d come to improve her life and stay with Michalis and his family.
At first her arrival is welcomed by the couple. Michalis has two jobs, including working in a bar, and Hedy runs a dress shop. They see Zina as helping by contributing to the cooking, cleaning and baby-sitting.
But soon Zina is worried about Hedy’s unfriendly tone and the way she turns her back on her. The tension rises when Zina asks if she could have the couple’s bedroom as the one she is sharing with little Anna smells of damp.
Hedy wants Zina out. She even claims that she is beginning to lose her hair as a result of one incident when Zina takes Anna to the cinema without first asking the parents’ permission.
She buys Anna a bag of chips and an ice cream after the film and the little girl becomes sick.
Back home there’s a row in Greek between Zina and Michalis, worsened for German-born Hedy because she can’t understand what they are saying.
• The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou. By Eleni Kyriacou. Head of Zeus, £14.99
