Patrick Leigh Fermor

Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, known as 'Paddy', (born 11 February 1915, London) is a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Battle of Crete during World War II. He is famous in the genre of travel literature.

Early travels

He soon decided, however, at just 18, to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, now Istanbul. Patrick had set off on 8 December 1933, when Hitler had recently come to power in Germany, with a few clothes, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace's odes. He slept in barns and with shepherds, but also in the country houses of Central Europe with the landed gentry and aristocracy. All along the journey he listened to the many stories and dialects he came across. Two of his travel books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, detail this journey and, as they were written decades later, benefit from his scholarly learning, giving a wealth of historical, geographical, linguistic and anthropological information as the narrative proceeds.

Related Topics:
Europe - Hook of Holland - Constantinople - Istanbul - 8 December - 1933 - Hitler - Germany - Oxford Book of English Verse - Horace - A Time of Gifts

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He arrived in Constantinople on 1 January, 1935 then continued on to travel around Greece. He was involved in a royalist campaign in Macedonia against republicans. He fell in love with Greece and its language. In Athens, he met Balasha Cantacuzène, a Romanian noblewoman, who he fell in love with. They shared an old watermill outside the city looking out towards Poros, where she painted and he wrote. They then moved on to Baleni, the Cantacuzène house in Moldavia, where Leigh Fermor was when World War II was declared.

Related Topics:
1 January - 1935 - Greece - Royalist - Macedonia - Athens - Balasha Cantacuzène - Romania - Poros - Moldavia

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