
From Memory to Myth: The Adventures of Patrick Leigh Fermor - quickfox
https://www.weeklystandard.com/dominic-green/from-memory-to-myth-the-adventures-of-patrick-leigh-fermor
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pjc50
_A Time Of Gifts_ is one of the most extraordinary books I've read.

It's a slow read, because Paddy is an extraordinarily erudite narrator who
loves purple prose. If it were just a description of what he saw while
travelling in the early 1930s, it would be interesting enough; but it's far
more than that. He's looking through educated and extremely romantic eyes at
the _old_ Europe, from Roman times to the Austro-Hungarian and Bohemian
empires. At the slightest trigger he will go on a literary/historical flight
of fancy.

And like all good travel writing, he meets people along the way who get him
into and out of scrapes. A surprising swathe of mitteleuropean aristocracy and
peasants. At the end of this journey somewhere (in a later book) he ends up as
the boyfriend of a Romanian princess.

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sherr
I didn't know he was a part of the SOE in WW2 and took part in the kidnapping
of Kreipe on Crete. If anyone can get to the British Museum in London before
July 15th, there's a free exhibition called "Charmed lives in Greece - Ghika,
Craxton,Leigh Fermor" [1]. I hope to visit tomorrow.

[1]
[http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/charmed_li...](http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/charmed_lives_in_greece.aspx)

