Miriam Margolyes
The Travel Diaries
Holly Rubenstein
4.5 • 813 Ratings
🗓️ 28 June 2022
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, I’m joined by a legend of stage and screen. Britain’s naughtiest national treasure. It’s the award-winning actress, Miriam Margolyes.
Miriam’s movie roles have included the BAFTA award-winning Mrs Mingott in Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Age of Innocence’ and of course Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films. She’s appeared in a host of hugely popular TV shows from Blackadder and Miss Marple to more recently the Real Exotic Marigold Hotel and Call the Midwife. And she’s also a prolific travel documentarian filming in and around Australia, the US and Scotland to name a few. As a lifelong lover of Charles Dickens, she presented the successful BBC documentary series Dickens’ America and toured the world with her acclaimed one woman show ‘Dicken’s Women’ in which she played 23 characters based on or inspired by characters in Dickens’s novels.
Speaking to me from her Australian home, Miriam was so engaging and generous with her time both before, after and during the interview - so grab a cuppa, settle in and enjoy listening to the very widely travelled and very entertaining Miriam Margolyes.
Destination Recap:
- Robertson, NSW, Australia
- Australia
- Tuscany, Italy
- Kingsgate, Kent Coast, England
- St Margaret’s Bay, Kent, England
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Isle of Harris, Scotland
- Cambridge, England
- Norfolk, England
- Basel, Switzerland
- Zurich, Switzerland
- Lindt Chocolate Shop, Zurich, Switzerland
- Israel
- Palestine
- The Rust Belt, USA
- India
- Italy
- Ireland
- Indonesia
- Kerala, India
- Calcutta, India
- Giglio, Italy
- Fordyce, Scotland
- Rimini, Italy
- Africa
Miriam is heading to a British theatre near you next month, as part of her upcoming book tour, in honour of the paperback release of her fantastic memoir, This Much is True. Head online for tickets.
With thanks to…
Small Luxury Hotels of the World - Ease yourself into a holiday headspace and visit slh.com/travelcomfortzones to find out more.
DK Eyewitness - Get new editions of DK’s award-winning Eyewitness and Top 10 travel books and plan out adventures to the likes of Italy, Mexico, Spain or Costa Rica. Each guide is complete with updated listings, interest-led travel advice and the latest practical information. Find them all online or at your local bookshop.
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To find out who’s joining me coming up, come and follow me on Instagram, I’m @hollyrubenstein - I’d love to hear from you.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Travel Diaries podcast Season 7 finale. |
| 0:11.4 | I'm your host, journalist Holly Rubinstein, and here each week I'll be speaking to a very special guest about the seven chapters in their life's travel diaries. From their earliest childhood |
| 0:22.7 | travel memory and the first place they fell in love with to their hidden gem and what's |
| 0:27.3 | at the top of their travel bucket list. We'll be uncovering their adventures around the world |
| 0:32.4 | and the travel experiences and destinations that have shaped their lives. I hope that you're all keeping well |
| 0:39.3 | this week. It's been great to see a lot of you have been travelling recently. I've added a lot of |
| 0:44.6 | places to my travel wish list. I'm just back from my first trip abroad this year actually, |
| 0:49.6 | ticking a destination off my own travel bucket list that's been on there for years, Lake Como in Italy. |
| 0:56.6 | So I was really lucky because I was out there reviewing some incredible hotels for my work. |
| 1:02.6 | And after a couple of trips there were postponed because of COVID, finally getting there, |
| 1:08.6 | it more than met my expectations. If you haven't been there, |
| 1:12.9 | you know, picture these verdant, steep, steep cliffs plunging into this shimmering water. |
| 1:21.7 | When the sun hits it, it looks like it's covered in glitter with classy river speed boats,irking glamorous people, you know, to dinner from one end to the other, these endless array of waterfront, amazing hotels and restaurants. |
| 1:36.8 | And these picturesque villages and towns that have somehow just sprung up on the cliff side, defying science. |
| 1:42.5 | I mean, full disclosure, pretty much all hotels on Lake |
| 1:45.9 | Como are pricey to stay in because they can get away with it. There's always this demand from tourists. |
| 1:52.0 | But if you're looking to visit on a budget, I'd say that an Airbnb or an apartment rental is the |
| 1:58.1 | best bet. But if you're looking for a really special hotel stay, |
| 2:01.1 | maybe you've got a special occasion coming up. One that I stayed in that made me think of |
| 2:05.3 | the podcast actually because I felt like it's a real hidden gem, partly because it's a |
| 2:10.0 | boutique hotel, so it's on the smaller side. And also because it's on the quieter side of the |
| 2:14.2 | lake was called Villa Lario. It's about 20 minutes drive from Como itself and is |
... |
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