At 52, Vanessa Hall-Smith is taking on a new challenge as director of the British Institute in Florence. She tells Anne Sebba she relishes the lifestyle change
ARRANGING to meet Vanessa Hall-Smith, the new director of the British Institute in Florence, revolves around a yoga class timetable. Hall-Smith, 52, is a Renaissance woman and ashtanga yoga is the latest diversion on which she expends her considerable energy. She is already a lawyer, linguist, keen amateur musician, gardener, cook and single mother. Now she is embarking on a new career. Changing lifestyle in your fifties is becoming increasingly common. Living so much longer and feeling invigorated by new challenges, people can often turn today’s dreams into tomorrow’s reality. But while the mind may be sharp, sometimes the body needs to be honed to meet fresh demands -hence ashtanga (power) yoga. Hall-Smith is an impressive woman -physically tall and intellectually agile, the sort who packs a lot into a day. She attributes much of her current drive to the twice-weekly yoga classes and is already looking for a teacher in Florence. “When I started ashtanga I thought I could not carry on because it is so demanding. But I persisted and it has given me much greater physical strength as well as mental focus,” she says. “It has made me realise there are all sorts of things one can do and learn. I may not be as flexible as the 20-year-old next to me but I am stronger and fitter than ever, and more open to new challenges than I would have been ten years ago.
“I always saw myself as having an untapped energy stream and over the past few years I have thought a lot about new directions I wanted my life to take. I was not looking for a new job, but an advertisement in The Times practically fell open at the page and my eye caught the word Florence. It was serendipity.” What prompted her to embrace a new challenge now was a series of bereavements: the death of a cousin and a dearly loved friend from cancer within months of each other, followed shortly after by the sudden death of her father. “When events like that happen you reassess your life. I had not worked out precisely what I wanted to do, but I wanted to make changes. I had contemplated going to live abroad eventually, though not just yet.” In Florence she will be living in an apartment in the magnificent 15th-century Palazzo Lanfredini, overlooking the River Arno. Her husband, Alper Riza, QC, a half-Turkish, half-Greek Cypriot whom she married in 1981 -they separated eight years ago -is moving back into the family home in North London to look after their two daughters, Lily, 22, a student at St Andrews, and 14-year-old Bella, and two cats.
“They will be looked after in a different way but I feel comfortable about that. I shall be on the phone every day, and it is so cheap to come back, even for the odd night,” she says. We sit in the newly converted basement kitchen of her Georgian house and she shows off the terraced garden that she designed and the palm trees she nurtures – obviously a woman dedicated to perfection whatever she turns her hand to. Her study is full of books about modern Italy and, ever the careful lawyer, she frequently darts from kitchen to study to check a reference to a Renaissance artist or to the institute itself.
The daughter of two doctors, Hall-Smith went to Roedean and, less conventionally, played violin in an Exeter university rock band. “I shall take my violin with me to Italy,” she says, “I haven’t played for years but I might find a quartet there that I can join. Without the same domestic responsibilities, I will have time to practise.” Her first contact with Italy came when, aged 16, she did a short course at the University for Foreigners at Perugia, “an experience that left a lasting impression on me. It is difficult to put a finger on it, but Italy is a place where your senses come alive, something to do with the smells and sounds -the noise of life, music in the streets.”
She also worked as a restaurant photographer in Florence, snapping diners and developing the prints while they ate. “I don’t think anywhere else in the world has seen such a concentration of creative output as 15th-century Florence,” she says. After reading law at Exeter and studying law and comparative literature at universities in Germany and France, she spent a year teaching English in Rome, by which time she was fluent in Italian and smitten by the country. “My desire to learn Italian was prompted by my love of music, to know more about a language which produced such beautiful terms as allegro ma non troppo (fast but not too fast). When I am in Italy I feel differently about myself, when I speak Italian I discover other parts of myself and express myself in a different way. I am much less inhibited. Italy is very visually aware: turn a corner and beautiful buildings are all around you. There is a great sense of style, presentation la bella figura really matters.”
Although she claims she was too taken up with music to be focused as a student, she was called to the Bar in 1976 and subsequently requalified as a solicitor and became a partner in two leading London firms, specialising in advertising, marketing and media-related issues. Yet she describes herself as a reluctant lawyer. “It was not so much that the work was dull -intellectually it was stimulating and I enjoyed that. But I knew I was not going to get anything more from it.”
The institute has a staff of 65 and mainly teaches courses on the history of art. Founded in 1917 by the authors Lina Waterfield and Edward Hutton, it was supported from the start by Arthur Acton, the antiques dealer father of Harold, a self-proclaimed aesthete born and raised in Florence. The Harold Acton Library contains the largest collection of English language books in Italy. The institute moved to the Palazzo Lanfredini in 1965, when Acton put two floors at its disposal. Hall-Smith hopes to expand the cookery classes given by local mammas and believes there is potential for short courses and third-age learning programmes. Above all, she would like to see the establishment of a major British arts festival in Florence. “But that is a dream which could take several years to bring to fruition,” she admits.
And what will she miss? “After my daughters I suppose the biggest adjustment will be learning to shop and cook for one.” Suddenly, it occurs to her that she has not lived on her own before, not even when she was a student -a realisation that shocks and delights her. “I am obviously going to discover a lot of new things about myself,” she says.