Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915–2011)

This second part of Patrick Leigh Fermor's journey to Constantinople takes us through the idyllic summer of 1934, from Easter day in Esztergom to the beginning of Autumn at the Iron Gates. The style of travel has changed rather: although he is still mostly walking, in A time of gifts, he had been living the life of the impecunious student traveller, sleeping rough or in cheap hotels and hostels, but since Munich he has been caught up in a chain of letters of introduction, moving from castle show more to castle as he enjoys the generous hospitality of the central European aristocracy.

In other circumstances we might be inclined to be rather disparaging about this endless procession of good luck and connections, but since we know that most of these wonderful characters are living on borrowed time, we can just sit back and enjoy it with him. And there is a lot to enjoy. We follow the author riding a borrowed horse over the Hungarian plain, dredging up forgotten fragments of Hindi and George Borrow to communicate with Gypsies in their own language, romping in cornfields with farmgirls, pursuing a clandestine liaison with a married woman during a Dornford Yates-style motor tour of the Carpathians and discovering common ground with an orthodox Rabbi in a remote logging camp.

There's an extra layer of irony when we read this book now - Leigh Fermor couldn't know when he was writing in 1986 that the map of Eastern Europe was about to be redrawn yet again. Possibly it was this that broke the flow — in any event, we're still waiting for the promised third part of the journey to Constantinople. show less

In recent years, I have become an enthusiast of the writings of Patrick Leigh Fermor - traveller, scholar, soldier, Hellene and linguist - after reading his books on Greece (Mani and Roumeli), his series on his youthful 'trudge across Europe' (A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and the unfinished The Broken Road), and the biography by Artemis Cooper. So I went into this selection of his letters with interest.

Of course, PLF was writing in a pre-Internet, even pre-telephone age show more (especially where making international calls was concerned). He had a wide circle of friends and his urge to write to them to exchange experiences and discoveries was great. What we find in these letters, then, is a pen portrait of a particular strata of British society, as well as a picture of the man himself.

How much this is to your taste will depend on how open-minded you are. PLF was a product of his background and upbringing, and that was very much one that was at ease with the landed gentry and minor aristocracy. PLF's parents were well-placed, and he was educated privately whilst his parents returned to India (his father being a distinguished geologist in the Raj). However, for a time, PLF was brought up in working-class rural England, and when he undertook his walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, he was as happy conversing with shepherds, farmers and other working people as he was in talking with priests, rabbis and minor aristocrats (a number of whom he had letters of introduction to).

This variety is shown in his letters. It was this ease with all manner of people, plus his ability with languages, that led him to Greece, and then to his wartime exploits on Crete. After the war, he moved in quite exalted circles, but would happily seek out the company of ordinary people when he returned to Greece, where he eventually settled with his wife. All this is front and centre in the letters. There is a list of dramatis personae at the end of the book; it starts with John Betjeman and includes Lawrence Durrell, Ann Fleming (wife of Ian), two of the Mitford girls (three if you count Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire), John Julius Norwich, Sacheverall Sitwell, Freya Stark, Philip Toynbee and Rex Warner. Other names are less well-known, but include a smattering of members of the British aristocracy. Deborah Cavendish ('Debo') was perhaps one of his greatest friends and their correspondence has been separately published.

It is interesting to speculate over PLF's relationship with the working classes. With a few exceptions, his connection with the English working class was fairly tenuous, whereas in Greece and Crete he was feted. Perhaps this is down to the English working class having become urbanised some hundred years earlier, and so disconnected from any sense of their history, folklore and culture, something which workers in Eastern Europe generally, and in the Balkans in particular still - at least in PLF's time - maintained. It is a theme in his books, albeit not directly stated; it does not appear so much in the letters, but knowing PLF's willingness to explore history and culture through the land's inhabitants, it underpins much of his writing even in personal correspondence.

Yet the overall effect of reading these letters, covering the years 1940 to 2010, is a little odd. It's a glimpse into a world now very much diminished, if not altogether vanished; and given the frequency with which PLF gets invited to country houses or circulates between England and the Continent, the reader could be excused for thinking that we were in the world of P.G. Wodehouse's Drones. But every one of PLF's correspondents and friends, whether of higher or lower birth, were people of accomplishment; authors, scholars, diplomats or explorers. PLF maintained contacts with his wartime comrades-in-arms; some were more successful in their post-war lives than others. Some of his Greek compatriots became influential politicians, though their stars waxed and waned,

This is certainly a world which I never had any insight into; PLF was a natural small-'c' conservative, though some of his views ran counter to the stereotype. Some of his attitudes were of his time, but there is little in this selection of letters that would raise much objection in more modern readers.

Having said that we moved in different circles, I was surprised to see that PLF was a regular house guest of the Devonshires at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, a place I know moderately well, and it seems that our circles made a slightly larger Venn diagram than I expected. After all, I was attracted first of all by the first part of his European 'trudge' covering ground I myself covered some sixty years after PLF did, and many of his reactions were ones I also had. I know one of the villages where he was brought up whilst his parents returned to India (and it is not a rural idyll). And his letters, like his books, show the same development of the author's voice. As an insight into the life and work of one of our more interesting characters, this book is valuable. show less

A companion volume to the author's reminiscences of his travels in the southern Peloponnese, Mani, this book draws together accounts of time spent in the less-travelled, northern mainland Greece. This is a much more episodic book; PLF starts in the north-east, in Thrace; then translates over to the western coast of the Aegean via the remarkable stylite monasteries of Meteora, proceeding southwards along the coast and eventually ending up in Missolonghi, in search of Byron's slippers. A final show more section moves along the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, from where he treks into the Kravara, a (then) remote and impoverished area noted for its beggars and their cant.

There is a lot of Greece which isn't covered, though PLF namechecks many places and it's a reasonable assumption that he was familiar with many of them. As ever, PLF's ability to converse with priests, shepherds, villagers, soldiers and taxi drivers is unalloyed pleasure and opens a window into a world almost certainly now disappeared.

But as I said, this book is rather more episodic than Mani, and a large portion is taken up with a discussion of the differences between the western Greek Romoi and eastern Greek Hellenes. He spends quite a lot of one chapter delineating the differences between these two sorts of Greek (which sometimes aren't differences at all); I found myself reading that section as though we were comparing modern socio-political factions. Strangely, that made a surprising amount of sense, which suggests to me that the saying about there being two sides to every argument hinges on those being the same two sides, regardless of what they actually call themselves.

And the chapter on the Kravara, and PLF's exploration of beggar's cant, had me thinking more about Polari, London gay slang of the 1950s and 1960s; the origins of Polari are considered to be Mediterranean (though mostly Italian) but can also be found in the slang of circus and fairground performers. Polari substituted "secret" words, mostly nouns, for ordinary English words whilst retaining the same grammar and structure; the Kravara beggars' cant seems to do similar, and the process of rendering his conversations into English for the reader meant that PLF was unable to avoid this.

But this extensive diversion is made up for by the short closing chapter, The Sounds of the Greek World, which is a prose poem to PLF's direct experience of the land and its people.

Still, even a flawed PLF book is a pleasure. I shall come back to this book again. show less

When I was a student at University (longer ago than I’d like to think...) I decided to become a member of the Folio Society. My first order included a handsome set of fairytale collections, a few history and fiction titles, and the Society’s edition of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s [b:A Time of Gifts|4899673|A Time of Gifts|Patrick Leigh Fermor|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1223017864s/4899673.jpg|2636997]. I was no fan of travel writing. Nor had I ever heard of Leigh Fermor. But this was one show more of the more affordable books in the catalogue, one that didn’t unduly stretch my restricted budget.

The volume remained unopened on my shelves until, one fine day, driven by boredom and a vague curiosity, I immersed myself in its pages. It blew me away.

In 1933, aged “18 and three-quarters” Leigh Fermor set off on a daunting but enthralling voyage - a journey on foot across mainland Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This exploit had a whiff of the Grand Old Tour about it, tinged with a gung-ho “Boys’ Own” sense of adventure. However, Leigh Fermor’s three-volume account of these travels (starting with “A Time of Gifts”) is anything but “boyish”. It is rich in evocative descriptions of sights, smells and sounds, which manage so admirably to capture a sense of place that one is quick to forgive the author’s occasional penchant for over-ripe metaphors. The text is sprinkled with erudite asides, giving insights into the history and culture of the countries which welcomed the young hiker.

There is another element which makes the book so poignant. Leigh Fermor wrote it decades after the events described. In the meantime, the Second World War – and middle age – had intervened, digging furrows in maps and complexion. Not surprisingly, the text is saturated with a feeling of nostalgia and loss. It often reads like an elegy to freedom and youth, and to a different way of life which had disappeared forever. The wide-eyed wonder of the teenage protagonist gives way to the more knowing narrative voice of the author’s older and wiser self.

“A Time of Gifts” describes the first leg of Leigh Fermor’s journey and leaves us with the traveller on a bridge crossing the Danube between Slovakia and Hungary. It is not just a great book – it is a special and memorable one, certainly a landmark in its genre.

Years passed before I rejoined Leigh Fermor on his journey which, in “Between the Woods and the Water” winds its way through Hungary, Transylvania and into Romania. But I must admit that after the initial elation at meeting an old friend again, I started to feel disappointed. The same youthful excitement leaps from the pages, the chapters are still illuminated by the erudition of its author. However, there were some things which bothered me. The narrative momentum is often held up by digressions into the political history of the area which, as the writer himself repeatedly admits, is complex and convoluted. Moreover, despite Leigh Fermor’s open-minded enthusiasm,he sometimes gives the impression that he has not shaken off a degree of class prejudice. Long stretches of the trek are spent in castles of aristocratic friends, fondly recalled during the rougher parts of the journey. And whilst peasants and shepherds are sympathetically described (especially if they are rustic beauties not averse to close encounters in haystacks), Gypsies almost invariably come across as dirty, scheming and dangerous.

Despite my reservations, as the last pages of the book approached, I found it increasingly difficult to put it away. Evidently, the magic of Leigh Fermor’s incredible journey has not yet worn off and I hope to rekindle it soon by reading [b:The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos|16240481|The Broken Road From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos|Patrick Leigh Fermor|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364857799s/16240481.jpg|22245955], the trilogy’s posthumously published conclusion.

Ave atque vale, Paddy! show less