Patrick Leigh Fermor

Presents an account of the author's travels through Northern Greece as he explores the geography of thearea and discusses connections between classical and Byzantine heritage and the history of the Ottoman empire and tries to track down Lord Byron's slippers.

Between the Woods and the Water is a travel book by British author Patrick Leigh Fermor, the second in a series of three books narrating the author's journey on foot across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1933/34. The first book in the series, A Time of Gifts, recounts Leigh Fermor's journey as far as the Middle Danube. Between the Woods and the Water (1986) begins with the author crossing the Mária Valéria bridge from Czechoslovakia into Hungary and ends when he reaches the Iron Gate, where the Danube formed the boundary between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Romania. The planned third volume of Leigh Fermor's journey to its completion in Constantinople, The Broken Road, was not completed in his lifetime, but was finally published in September 2013. Many years after his travel, Leigh Fermor's diary of the Danubian leg of his journey was found in a castle in Romania and returned to him. He used it in his writing of the book, which also drew on the knowledge he had accumulated in the intervening years. (

Leigh Fermor walked from London to Budapest when he was 18. Sometimes called England's greatest travel writer.

Description of PLF's sojourn in various monasteries where he spent time as a guest so he could enjoy the privacy and silence to write.

From amazon dot com: "This slim book starts with the meeting of an English traveler and an enigmatic elderly Frenchwoman on an Aegean island. He is captivated by her painting of a busy Caribbean port in the shadow of a volcano, which leads her to tell him the story of her childhood in that town back at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tale she unfolds, set in the tropical luxury of the island of Saint-Jacques, is one of romantic intrigue and decadence involving the descendants of slaves and a fading French aristocracy. Then, on the night of the annual Mardi Gras ball, a whole world comes to a catastrophic and haunting end." From Google Books: "Originally published in 1953, this novel was immediately hailed as a rare sweep of color across the drab post-war years. Fermor's writing about this tropical island is as beautiful and haunting as the sound of the violins rising from the water, which is all that remains of the island and its inhabitants."

The author provides an account of his travels through Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, Barbados, Trinidad, Haiti, and various other islands during the 1940s.

Ian Fleming conceived the idea for a series on the Seven Deadly Sins in the Sunday Times, and though it did not materialize for the paper, a book was published in 1962 that contained essays by some of England’s finest writers on their sin of choice. Ian Fleming wrote the foreword and declared that the traditional seven deadly sins—PRIDE, ENVY, ANGER, SLOTH [accidie], COVETOUSNESS, GLUTTONY and LUST—were no longer sufficient.Thereupon, he proposed seven deadlier sins worthier of a passport to Hell: SNOBBERY, MORAL COWARDICE, HYPOCRISY, CRUELTY, SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS, AVARICE & MALICE. This book takes a look at these vices as found in the novels of Ian Fleming.

A revelatory collection of letters written by the author of The Broken Road. Handsome, spirited and erudite, Patrick Leigh Fermor was a war hero and one the greatest travel writers of his generation. He was also a spectacularly gifted friend. The letters in this collection span almost seventy years, the first written ten days before Paddy's twenty-fifth birthday, the last when he was ninety-four. His correspondents include Deborah Devonshire, Ann Fleming, Nancy Mitford, Lawrence Durrell, Diana Cooper and his lifelong companion, Joan Rayner; he wrote his first letter to her in his cell at the monastery Saint Wandrille, the setting for his reflections on monastic life in A Time to Keep Silence. His letters exhibit many of his most engaging characteristics: his zest for life, his unending curiosity, his lyrical descriptive powers, his love of language, his exuberance and his tendency to get into scrapes--particularly when drinking and, quite separately, driving. Here are plenty of extraordinary stories: the hunt for Byron's slippers in one of the remotest regions of Greece; an ignominious dismissal from Somerset Maugham's Villa Mauresque; hiding behind a bush to dub Dirk Bogarde into Greek during the shooting of Ill Met by Moonlight, the film based on the story of General Kreipe's abduction; his extensive travels. Some letters contain glimpses of the great and the good, while others are included purely for the joy of the jokes.

"One of the most daring feats in Patrick Leigh Fermor's daring life was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, on April 26, 1944. Abducting a General, now published for the first time in the United States, is Leigh Fermor's own account of the kidnapping. Written in his inimitable prose, and introduced by the acclaimed Special Operations Executive historian Roderick Bailey, it is a glorious firsthand account of one of the great adventures of the Second World War. Also included in this book are Leigh Fermor's intelligence reports sent from caves deep within Crete, which bring the immediacy of SOE operations vividly alive, as well as the peril under which the SOE and Resistance were operating, and a guide to the journey that Kreipe took, from the abandonment of his car to the embarkation site, so that the modern visitor to Crete can relive this extraordinary trip"--

"In the winter of 1933 eighteen-year-old Patrick ('Paddy') Leigh Fermor set out to walk across Europe, starting in Holland and ending in Constantinople, a trip that took him the better part of a year. Decades later, when he was well over fifty, Leigh Fermor told the story of that life-changing journey in A time of gifts and Between the woods and the water ... The broken road is the long and avidly awaited account of the final leg of his youthful adventure that Leigh Fermor promised but was unable to finish before his death in 2011, assembled from Leigh Fermor's manuscripts by his prize-winning biographer Artemis Cooper and the travel writer Colin Thubron"--

"The first collection of letters from Patrick Leigh Fermor, Dashing for the Post, delighted critics and public alike. This second volume, More Dashing, presents a further selection of letters that exude a zest for life and adventure characteristic of the man known to all as 'Paddy'. Paddy's exuberant letters contain glimpses of the great and the good: a chance conversation with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, when Paddy opens the wrong door, or a glass of ouzo under the pine trees with Harold Macmillan. They describe encounters with such varied figures as Jackie Onassis, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Oswald Mosley and Peter Mandelson, while also relating adventures with the humble: a 'pick-nick' with the stonemasons at Kardamyli, or a drunken celebration in the Cretan mountains with his old comrades from the Resistance, most of them simple shepherds and goatherds. Paddy was at ease in any company - unfailingly charming, boyish, gentle and fun. Patrick Leigh Fermor has long been recognised as one of the greatest travel writers of his time. Nowhere is his restless curiosity and delight in language more dazzlingly displayed than in his letters, skilfully edited in this collection by Adam Sisman."--Publisher's description.

"The first extensive collection of letters written by war hero and travel writing legend Patrick Leigh Fermor. The letters in this volume span seventy years, from February 1940 to January 2010. The first was written ten days before Patrick Leigh Fermor's twenty-fifth birthday, when he was an officer cadet, hoping for a commission in the Irish Guards. He had hurried back to England from Romania in September 1939, expecting to die within weeks of being sent into action, like his friend who was a junior officer in the First World War. The last two were written on the same day, when Paddy (as he called himself, and almost everyone else called him) was ninety-four, a widower, very deaf, and suffering from tunnel vision, which made it hard for him to read even his own handwriting. His voice was already hoarse from the throat cancer that would kill him seventeen months later. But these last letters, like the first and most of the others printed here, exude a zest that was characteristic. From first to last, Paddy's letters radiate warmth and gaiety. Often they are decorated with witty illustrations and enhanced by comic verse. Sometimes they contain riddles and cringe-making puns"--