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 of 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.