A childhood in Stara Zagora with her grandparents cultivated a love of stories and fairy tales in Bistra Johnson (nee Tangarova). And it is peculiar how childhood interests can manifest themselves years later, often when unexpected, and shape one’s life in ways unimaginable for a six-year-old mind.

Bistra eventually took her penchant for writing, her Bulgarian origins and her international experience and created a story of her own: Thracian Princess, published through Lulu.com. And while it is a fascinating insight into Bulgaria’s Thracian history, Bistra’s own story is no less worthy of being told.

Her parents moved to Sofia from Stara Zagora in the early 1960s, when she was four, because her father took up a new post there. She stayed behind with her maternal grandparents, who were strict, but kind. “When I was little, I loved fairy tales and stories and asked the adults to read books to me,” she says. “Some of them I knew by heart, for I’d heard them so many times.” At the age of four or five, she learnt to read and afterwards there was no stopping her. At six, she was enrolled in an English-language kindergarten and continued with English language lessons afterwards. But, she says, “I have to admit I didn’t read that much in English at the time. There was a very good library at home with Bulgarian and translated foreign literature so I just went through it, reading whatever took my fancy. My uncle decided at one point that I was reading novels not very suitable for my age and started to supervise my reading. My grandfather, a retired major from the Royal Engineers and an avid reader himself, also bought me various books, including all the children’s classics – Robinson Crusoe, The Jungle Book, The Lioness Elsa, Alice in Wonderland, The Happy Prince.”

School itself was not her favourite occupation. She says that if she did not like a subject, she saw no reason to put much effort into it. And, she missed her parents, joining them only during holidays.

At 12, she moved to Sofia and continued school. There, “quite a few” frustrations arose. “Firstly I had to get used to the new school; I was seen as a provincial and treated condescendingly by my classmates. But I settled down nicely,” Bistra says. “Then I had to think about my future and I didn’t relish the direction I was steered towards. There was an expectation in the family that I would follow in my father’s footsteps and become an architect and I wasn’t that keen. What I really wanted was to become a writer, and thought the way to achieve this was to do Bulgarian language and literature in university.”

But, “wiser heads” prevailed and discouraged this idea. With hindsight, she thinks that that was for the best – if such had occurred, she says that she probably would have ended up a teacher like her mother, her grandmother and her great-grandmother, and “I don’t see myself suited to that profession”. So, she went for electrical engineering, which she found interesting enough to study. Through those years, writing remained her hobby.

Come 1989, Bistra had already graduated and was working as an electrical engineer. “But then tragedy struck,” she says. “Suddenly I had to cope with bereavement; my husband unexpectedly died and I found this very hard to come to terms with. My own mother must have become rather concerned; she arranged for me to go and stay with some friends of hers in France and to study.

“French language there, something I always wanted to do. At first I flatly refused, but she managed to cajole me into it and I finally agreed.”

The month that Bistra spent in France – in a small village just outside Cholet in the north-west of the country – greatly improved her fluency in the language, and she applied for a French course at the University of Nantes. She took a sabbatical from work in Sofia, obtained a long-term visa from the French embassy and one autumn day, became a student again. “Those were perhaps the happiest days in my life. We studied French literature and I was pleased to be able to read in original, what I’d already read translated in my own language – the works of Maupassant, Flaubert, Lamartine, Balzac, Hugo... We were a mixed group of young people coming from all over the world and our only language in common was French.”

And, there was an Englishman in the group. A relationship between him and her gradually developed, and led to marriage.

Now they live in England together.

“I wouldn’t say there was culture shock, though life in England is very different from what I was used to, especially because we settled in Rochester in Kent, quite a provincial place, where foreigners of any sort are regarded with suspicion and distrust and the people had very parochial attitudes and ideas. It wasn’t exactly England as I had imagined it.” Despite that, and the climate not agreeing with her, she found England beautiful and enchanting.

Bistra and her husband Mark joined English Heritage, the agency that looks after historical monuments, which has given them the chance to go to “some wonderful places”, like castles and manor houses, churches and abbeys, Roman and Norman ruins, and appreciate what the country has to offer.

A few years later, Mark took a job in Amsterdam. A new phase began for the couple. Bistra started doing some translation, translating into English a number of articles on architecture and a book called Environment. Man. Space. Architectural Ecology by Svetlana Gologacheva. She also embarked on “yet another language course for I badly needed Dutch for everyday life in Holland”.

Another few years and another move, they found themselves in France again, in Nice.

During this time, archaeological discoveries were being made in Bulgaria and Bistra followed them avidly, searching the internet for more information. Eventually, she decided to write a short story about them – in English, because by that time English had become her first language. “While away from my country the Bulgarian language had undergone certain changes; it happens with any language I suppose. With American culture had come American terms and expressions substituting for perfectly good Bulgarian ones and being a bit of a purist, I did not appreciate that,” she says.

Written originally for her husband in summer 2004, she says that he loved the story so much that he encouraged her to make a novel out of it. “And so that’s how Thracian Princess was born,” she says.

A move back to the UK, to Surrey, put the project on hold, and when she finally was able to start at it again, it proved to be hard work. “Having to flesh out a short story was probably not the best way to write my first book, but that’s how it was done and I have to admit that I became more and more fascinated with the subject as time went by,” she says. “I felt it must have been so exciting to live in that remote period of time when philosophical thought was gradually changing the ancient world and great political figures were shaping events in Thrace, Greece and Persia.

“Whether I have succeeded to demonstrate my enthusiasm to my readers is difficult to say, but I would have succeeded in my aim if reading about Veronica’s Thrace interested and inspired them to find out more.”

The 144-page book itself tells the story of Veronica, a young English woman whose parents bought a house in Stara Zagora and moved to Bulgaria. In somewhat of a period of transition herself, she goes to visit them, meets a handsome neighbour (an architect, at that) and starts to learn about the country.

Then, the reader is as surprised as is Veronica – suddenly she is in ancient Thrace (called Trakiya in Bulgarian), and the beloved new wife of the king.

Through this experience, the reader, like Veronica, learns first-hand about a world that is probably unknown to most.

Bistra says that her facts came from a variety of sources and lots of research. A comprehensive glossary at the back substantiates and further explains many of the characters and terms. For example, the town where the novel is set has been known under eight names: Beroe (meaning “iron”, a Thracian settlement), Augusta Trajana (Roman era), Beroia/Vereia, Irinopolis (in honour of Empress Irina, in the Byzantine era), Boruy (during the First Bulgarian Kingdom), Eskizagra (Turkish for “behind the mountain”), Zheleznik (Slavic for “iron”), and now, finally, Stara Zagora (meaning “the old one behind the mountain”).

The goal of Thracian Princess is to share with readers what Bistra has discovered about the world of the ancient Thracians and to encourage them to find out more.

“I would also like to raise some awareness about treasure hunting and the consequences of selling national treasures to rich collectors who hide them away and rarely appreciate them for their true worth,” she says. “Bulgaria can learn a lot from organisations like English Heritage and The National Trust in Britain. As it is the organisations involved in the preservation of our heritage, although with enthusiastic supporters, seem to me rather amateurish in their efforts. Or perhaps more investment is needed. Whatever the problem, we desperately need an organisation with a sound structure, a capable governing body with clear aims on the preservation of the numerous historical monuments that are not just our Bulgarian heritage but the heritage of the whole European family.”