Found this lovely article here, about a writer who ought to be more well known in the US. I first read his books “Roumeli” and “Mani”, at the urging of my next-door neighbor in Athens, Kyria Penny. She about swooned when describing “A Time of Gifts”, and I was so enchanted when I read it that I bought the sequel “Between the Woods and the Water” in hardback and sight-unseen when it was first published. (I seem to have a first edition of it, but the dust-jacket is a little worn, and there are two dribbles of brown stain across the page edges and one edge of the book jacket)

At the age of 18 and on the budget of a pound a week, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out to walk across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This was in 1933; He kept a diary, and made notes, which were not written up until decades later; a third volume has been promised, but yet to be delivered.

Excellent reads… and as a side-note, Leigh Fermor had an extremely interesting time during World War II, working with Greek partisans on Crete, where he and another commando, W.Stanley Moss, kidnapped the German Army divisional commander, and spirited him off the island, a short way ahead of a massive German manhunt. This is a very good account of it, written by Moss some years afterwards.

Found courtesy of Photon Courier