Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Hardcover – October 15, 2013

BOOKS: ON THE AMAZON PADDY WAGONFERMOR'S ALMANAC:Paddy RevisedBy John M. EdwardsJohn M. Edwards mulls over the bohemian blarney of the world's most famous footloose freeloader: Patrick Leigh Fermor-----------------------------------------------Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure: By Artemis Cooper: Illustrated: 448 pp.: New York Review Books, $36------------------------------------------------"Soon the delightful cry of `Delphinia' went up: a school of dolphins was gambolling about half a mile further out to sea. They seemed to have spotted us at the same moment, for in a second half a dozen of them were tearing their way toward us, all surfacing in the same parabola and plunging together as if they were in some invisible harness."--Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani------------------------------------------"Paddy" to his pals, Patrick Leigh Fermor is now a not-so-neglected name to reckon with. Knighted in 2004, Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor (11 February 1915 - 10 June 2011) is considered by many, despite the Irish-sounding surname, to be England's greatest travel writer. Or as the BBC put it, a cross between "Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene." Even so, Paddy--author, scholar, soldier, spy--gained lasting literary acclaim only late in his life. He wrote about events long past without the help of his lost journals (one of them was recovered years later from a former mistress), ending up writing with an intriguing mix of memory and imagination. His nonfiction books are so well written, we feel like we have lived through them ourselves. Ordering on Amazon, I dropped all of Paddy's books in my shopping cart and sped through checkout, ready to eye his entire oeuvre exclusively for The Smart Set. As someone who actually believes in the pagan gods of classical antiquity, as fallible as mere mortals--and a big fan of Henry Miller's The Collossus of Marousi to boot--I wanted to steep myself in Paddy's Technicolor world of Mediterranean maenads, lost in sirensong straight out of a Ray Harryhausen flick. Best known for his classic trilogy about his bildungsroman voyage by foot across Europe--A Time of Gifts (1977), Between the Woods and the Water (1986), and The Broken Road (2013), the last of which was published posthumously--Paddy wrote about a "dream odyssey of every footloose student," according to his friendly rival Colin Thubron. In 1933, Paddy, at the age of 18, set out to walk from the Hook of Holland to "Constantinople" (the Philhellene's term for modern-day Instanbul, Turkey). A recent biography, worth reading, Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, by Artemis Cooper, brings out the romantic tradition of the "vagabond" in all of us, with colorful operatic characters, priceless cultural artifacts, and vaguely improbable landscapes. Luckily, Paddy waited over thirty years to release his finest narrative work, sifted through mercurial memory and addended by artistic license, rather than settling upon slapdash diary. Home for Fermor, as he has said more than twice, is "a base to be nomadic from," while he keeps company with tramps and vagabonds, peasants and gypsys, and sleeps in uncomfortable hayricks and baronial manors. We can almost visualize Paddy right there in the thick of it, through the bohemian hobo haze of "Looney Toons"-ish cartoon bums, usually sporting handkerchiefs impishly tied to walking sticks. Born in London and died in Dembleton, Paddy ended up a decorated war hero and pub raconteur. Farmed out to friends while his parents were away in Raj-ruled India, Paddy did not properly get to know his parents until the age of four. No surprise, Paddy had a troubled youth, managing to get himself put into a school for "difficult children," before later being expelled from the King's School in Canterbury for holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter. Paddy describes his young self thus: "A cruel Fauntleroy veneer masked a Charles Adams fiend that lurked beneath." His only real ambition was to dance the Charleston at Roaring Twenties Jazz Age parties and become a famous writer, which in 1933 took him to boho Shepherd's Market in London, and soon after to the Balkans and Greece. What Colin Thubron called "the longest gap year in history." To retrace our trail a little bit, Paddy ranks right up there with Paul Theroux, Erik Newby, and Norman Lewis. One of the so-called Bright Young Things (which included Evelyn Waugh and Robert Byron), Fermor's fermented writings evidence terroir, featuring fruit-forward diction with a noble-rot nose on it, uncorked way past their expiration dates. No other travel writer I can think of so effortlessly relies on hindsight, such as the following excerpt from A Time of Gifts at a "hoggish catalepsy" in the famous Haufbrauhaus in Munich, Germany, right after Hitler came to power in Deutschland in 1933: "I was back in beer territory. Halfway up the vaulted stairs a groaning Brownshirt, propped against the wall on a swastika'd arm, was unloosing, in a staunchless gush down the steps, the intake of hours. Love's labour lost. . . . Hands like bundles of sausages flew nimbly, packing in forkload on forkload of ham, salami, frankfurters, krenwurst and bludwurst and stone tankards were lifted for long swallows of liquid which sprang out again instantaneously on cheek and brow. . . . It was some terrible German saga, where snow vanished under the breath of dragons whose red-hot blood thawed sword blades like icicles. . . . Or so it seemed, when the third mug arrived." Paddy offers an exceptional argument in favor of the vagabond life, reminiscent of the tramps in Depression Era America and the swells in Grand Tour Europe, sleeping in abandoned barns and shepherds' huts, as well as being invited into the landed-gentry country homes of Central European aristocracy, such as Baron Blah Blah Blah, serving up roast goose and decent claret. (I'll name just one of his myriad royal hosts with long unpronounceable names: Baron Tibor Solymosy.) More important, Paddy might be the very first genuine postmodern "backpacker," since he travels only with what he can carry in a sturdy rucksack: clothes, letters of introduction, an Oxford Book of English Verse, and a copy of Horace's Odes. Heavily influenced by Lord Byron, who died fighting in the Greek War for Independence, and Robert Byron, who drowned in 1941 like Shelley from a torpedo blast, Paddy too had a Hellenic obsession. He even reportedly swam across the Hellespont. Referring to his Olympian "Buster Crabbe"-like feat he was confident that he "had beaten all records for slowness and length of immersion." After at last arriving in "Constantinople" (now "Instanbul" since the eclipse of Ottoman power)) in 1935, Paddy moved on to amazing Greece, where he fell for his "first love" in Athens: a "Phanariot" Roumanian noblewoman named Princess Balasha Cantacuzene. They set up shop in what would end up being Paddy's second home: Kardamyli on southern Greece's Mani peninsula. They then moved to Moldova right before calamity struck and ended up being separated by jagged-jigsaw-puzzle-pieces of nation states swept up in the worldwide conflagration. During World War II, as a newbie in the elite Irish Guards, Paddy was involved in the "Mission Impossible"-y resistance in Crete against the Axis powers. There, disguised in a sheepskin jerkin, he helped with the war effort. Most famously, after three tours in occupied Greece, one including a dramatic parachute jump, in 1944 he kidnapped the German General Heinrich Kreipe. Although nothing quite beats the lyrical A Time of Gifts, all of Paddy's mostly successful work deserves mention. His first book, "The Traveller's Tree (1950), is still one of the best books ever written about the Caribbean. It won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and was excessively quoted by Ian Fleming in Live and Let Die. It was also, despite its antique handling of racial issues, one of the first books to mention the then-almost-unknown cult of Rastafarianism. Judging by the book's unique tone, Paddy was no stranger to smoking the ganja, too. His next book, a vaguely disappointing first novel called The Violins of Saint-Jacques (1956) is difficult to track down either on the megastore bookshelf or the omniscient web. Almost optioned as a film, the book went on to inspire an opera. Ultimately avoiding failure in the nick of time, Paddy married Joan Elizabeth Rayner in 1968 (unfortunately right during the Sexual Revolution), daughter of a noble family. Even though she later died in June 2003, aged 91, leaving the scholar-author-soldier decidedly bitter, Paddy under her presence pulled off of his proverbial wagon and released what is surely his best works, including the legendary classic to be mentioned ad nauseum "A Time of Gifts." Obviously influenced by Byron (Robert, not Lord), whose Athos (1924) capitalized on the craze of Anglo classicist Philhellenes, Paddy's two books on amazing Greece, Mani: Travels in the Southern Pelopponese (1958) and Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (1966), are so exquisitely versed, even though way over our heads linguistically, with colorful Greek sur- and placenames and translations of poetically iconic terms, that we all fall under an olive-grove trance. It is not what is written that is important, but instead how. A fashion-conscious blade, Paddy in Roumeli, commented upon the rumor that the outlandishly dressed, ceremonial-dagger-wielding shepherd nomads "Savakatsans" (Black Departers) of Northern Greece never bathe from birth to death: "Oddly, they scarcely smell at all, perhaps because of the time-stiffening carapace of cloth which encases them." Although separated by nearly a decade the two Greek books make excellent companions for the guest-room night table, dazzling us with unfamiliar terms and hard-to-pronounce locations. (Paddy, although occasionally supplying translations, seems to assume his learned readership has studied at least some Greek.) Amidst a backdrop of hilltop Byzantine monasteries, hagiographic frescos of saints and martyrs, and illuminated manuscripts, Paddy involves us in his wayward philosophic peregrinations. Fermor's Odyssey. For example, from Mani, in Missolonghi, Paddy goes looking for Byron's slippers; in Astakos ("lobster" in Greek), Paddy finds no lobsters; and on the Mani peninsula, Paddy investigates an ouzo-swilling Zorba the Greek fisherman claiming to be the rightful heir to the throne of Byzantium, as well as unsubstantiated rumors of a race of ancient Jews. Rather than relying on his lost diaries, whose absence "aches like an old wound in cold weather," he sifts his stories into meme memoir, and then some. In Between the Woods and the Water, for example, Paddy describes a chance meeting in Bulgaria inside "an abode harmoniously shared by Polythemus [the Cyclops from Homer's The Odyssey] and Sinbad." Paddy relates in seductive (no: shimmering) prose: "I crawled the path and I pulled open an improvised door, uttering a last dobar vecher [good evening] into the memorable cavern beyond. A dozen firelit faces looked up in surprise and consternation from the cross-legged supper, as though a sea monster or a drowned man's ghost had come. . . ." While re-reading Paddy's essay collection Words of Mercury (2003) in Knossos, Crete, at an al fresco taverna with excellent retsina and grilled squid resembling asterixes, near the Temple of Minos (of "Minotaur" fame), I became enthralled with his twice-told tales of derring-do. It was here in 1944 that Paddy organized the resistance against the Axis powers and kidnapped the German General Heinrich Kreipe, with whom, after the war, he became friends: both of them were, after all, fans of Horace. I felt like I was frigging right there with the unfamiliar chthonic Greek language spewing out of unemployed "Golden Dawn" peasants mouths like black ink cartridges on an HP printer. "No euros, drachmas!" A film version of Paddy's wartime exploits in Greece called "Ill Met by Moonlight" (1950), featured Dirk Bogarde as Paddy. A recipient of both the OBE (Order of the British Empire) and a DSO (Distinguished Service Order), Paddy was also an Honorary citizen of Crete, where he was nicknamed, for no apparent good reason, "Michalis." But it is the spirit of the journey that counts. Paddy, dressed in a sheepskin jerkin, "sleeps rough," in barns and monasteries, inns and hostels, caves and sheepfolds, and people's couches and under the stars. Often grubbing at monasteries for silence and solitude, in order to write, Paddy covers in his ode to unemployment what it is like to be young and free abroad, much like the Vagabonding ethic now propounded by Rolf Potts. In the slender volume A Time to Keep Silence (1957), Paddy relates how he sponges off monasteries, such as the Benedictine Monastery at Saint Wandrille in Normandy, in order to make sense of his world. Rereading Paddy's impressive oeuvre of pulchritudinous prose and Klephtic songs in an Oriental register, a "roundup" worthy of repeating, abounding with footloose barons and beggars straight out of a game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," you will never take your own two legs for granted ever again. His vanished Europe is a Grimm's fairytale of an outcast depending upon the kindness of strangers, "a stroll from one Schloss to another." Whether he is describing the pine-clad Carpathians or glorious Black Sea, Eastern Orthodox monasteries or Byzantine Empire onion domes, Paddy pads his text with the "rumour of wolves" (or, werewolves) and the legacy of Germanic Transylvanian Prince Dracula (or, "Vlad Tepes" [Vlad the Impaler]). Paddy proves that even the best-laid plans may run off course, like a colorful gypsy caravan from Universal Pictures. Especially due to lack of funds. In Vienna, missing a monthly allowance payment of four pounds sterling in the "poste restante" while staying in a Salvation Army Hostel (much like a modern-day YHA joint), he is convinced by a fellow flaneur named Konrad to sell sketches door to door. Which is a better gig than "Import-Export" (an international euphemism for "chronic unemployment"). Artemis Cooper, Fermor's biographer, says Paddy "smudged the facts a little." Much like his close friend Bruce Chatwin, if not Lawrence Durell, Paddy admitted that occasionally he ad libs, such as a highly dubious account of riding through the Hungarian puzhta by horseback. Response? Paddy "felt the reader might be getting bored of me, just plodding along. . . ." Or, as Artemis Cooper also says more than once, Paddy's "magpie mind" adds details freely. Until 2007, Paddy wrote all of his books in longhand, only reluctantly turning to a typewriter in hopes of finishing his magnum opus on vagabonding through pre-war Europe right before the mappa mundi burst into flame. . . . A five-pack-a-day smoker, whose photos frequently feature him stylishly holding a dangling cigarette like Rod Serling narrating "The Twilight Zone," Paddy was nevertheless physically fit. Splitting his time between the Mani peninsula in Greece and Worcestorshire, England, his last request was to be returned to his native soil, deceased in 2011, aged 96, only one day after his return, the dearly departed spy in him as spry and sly as ever. . . .--John M. Edwards, 2014------------------------------------------------------------------------------FURTHER READING1. The Traveller's Tree (1950)2. The Violins of Saint-Jacques (1953)3. A Time to Keep Silence (1957)4. Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958)5. Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (1966)6. A Time of Gifts: On foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (1977)7. Between the Woods and the Water (1986)8. Three Letters from the Andes (1991)9. Words of Mercury (2003)10. In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor (2008)11. The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos (2013)--John M. Edwards, 2014------------------------------------------------------------------------------P.S. I just won 22 NATJA Awards. I also won 2 Transitions Abroad Narrative Essay Contest Awards (2009 and 2012), as well as 3 Notable Essays nods in The Best American Essays (2011/2012/2013).-------------------------------------------------------------------------------BIO: John M. Edwards, an award-winning travel writer and Mayflower descendant directly related to William Bradfield, has written for such magazines as CNN Traveler, Salon.com, Islands, and North American Review. He turned down a job as lead bassist for STP (The Stone Temple Pilots) way back when before they were big, plus he helped write "PLUSH" (the opening chords), voted The Best Song of the 20th Century by Rolling Stone Magazine.Bio: John M. Edwards has traveled worldwidely (five continents plus), with stunts ranging from surviving a ferry sinking off Thailand, to getting caught in a military coup in Fiji, to bussing Vietnam on a Larium buzz. A former editor at Pocket Books and Emerging Markets, John is now a freelance photojournalist, writer, editor, and poet. His work has appeared in Amazon.com, CNN Traveller, DVD Express, Entertainment Weekly, Missouri Review, Literary Traveler, Salon.com, Grand Tour, Islands, Escape, Endless Vacation, International Living, Condé Nast Traveler, Travelworld, Wicked World, Van Gogh's Ear, Adventure Journey, Emerging Markets, International Business Times, Travelworld, Adventuring and Exploration, Art of Backpacking, Travel and Talk, Travelink, TravMonkey, Pure Travel, InTravel, Global Writes, Global Travel Review, Thoughts for All Seasons, Arts and Opinion, Pleiades Magazine, Artdirect, Verge, Stellar, Slab, Glimpse, Eclectica, The Smoking Poet, Poets & Writers, Coffee Journal, Lilliput Review, Poetry Motel, Tulane Review, Kit-Cat Review, Space & Time, Dark Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares, Dwarf Stars, Planeta, StepAway, Sacred Ground, Richmond Review, Essays & Fictions, Danse Macabre, Mango, Mabuhay, Famous Monsters of Filmland, 3 Quarks Daily, Vagabundo, Vagabondish, Vagabonds, Big World, Indie Travel Manifesto, Travelblogger, Dave's Travel Corner, Amazing Travel Stories, Xtreme Travel Stories, Traveling Stories, AH-HA Traveler, StepAway, Famtripper, France Magazine, France Plane Reader, France Revisited, Europe Revisited, USA Revisited, The Expeditioner, Hack Writers, Travelmag, Travelink, Travmonkey, Travelr Magazine, BootsnAll, ForeWord, Borderlines, Go Mad Nomad, Go Nomad, Go World Travel, Dossier Journal, Martian Lit, Literary Traveler, Travelworld, Global Travel Review, Global Writes, North Dakota Quarterly, Richmond Review, The Expeditioner, Borderlines, ForeWord, Michigan Quarterly Review, and North American Review. He recently won twenty-two NATJA (North American Travel Journalists Association) Awards, two TANEC (Transitions Abroad Narrative Essay Contest) Awards, a Literal Latté Travel Writing Award, a (trips) New Millenium Poetry Award, a Road Junky Hell Trips Award, a Bradt Independent on Sunday Award, and three Solas Awards (sponsored by Travelers" Tales). He also got three Notable Essays nods in The Best American Essays (2011/2012/2013). He lives in New York City's "Hell's Kitchen." He is editor-in-chief of the upcoming annual Rotten Vacations. He is now working on a book called "EUROPE ON A G-STRING: Sheer Travels Across a Jagged Jigsaw." He played in a high-school garage band with Page McConnell, now the keyboardist for PHISH. He also turned down a job as lead bassist for STP (The Stone Temple Pilots), plus he helped write "PLUSH," voted The Best Song of the 20th Century by Rolling Stone Magazine.

I was a little disappointed with this biography. I felt it was too long since, although PLF had an interesting life there is not very much happening in the way of 'action' after his stunt of kidnapping a general on Crete during the last year of World War II to warrant 466 pages. The author fills a lot of space with for instance the almost complete story of this kidnapping in 'Ill met by Moonlight' which is a book by itself and has no place in this biography. She also writes endless pages listing all the people PLF knew, which amounts to a list of 'who is who' in English society.This may be interesting for English people but has not much interest for anyone else.If I compare this biography with say the one on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson the quality of writing is miles apart. That one I could not put down whereas the one on PLF made me skip quite a few pages because they were so boring.Had the writer limited herself on PLF's life as such with the things he actually did and experienced the book most likely could have been around the 250 to 300 pages mark and would make much more riveting reading. But the endless mentioning of his constant travels here and there with any amount of glitterati friends and not much meaning other than giving the impression of very restless people who have nothing better to do become tedious. Only PLF's own travels such as the ones to the monasteries of the Athos etc. and the one as a young man before WW II are interesting. But they are already books in their own right .A pity, because this could have been a great book about a very unusual and interesting man.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Artemis Cooper's biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor, surely one of the more interesting people of the 20th century. I had read A Time of Gifts (by PLF) many years before but you could read this biography without having read any of Fermor's books. He had a remarkable life, growing up in 1920's and 30's England, then walking across Europe, seeing Nazism take hold, meeting remarkable people, having many adventures and most importantly witnessing a Europe that was about to disappear. He then lived in Rumania before joining the British Army and eventually winding up in Crete after it had been invaded by Germans. His exploits there, including the famous kidnap of a German general were extraordinary. His later life was a life of travel, writing and friendship until his death at 96. The story is told clearly by Ms Cooper who has read all the books and letters, spoken to all his friends or their families and visited many of the important locales. It made me immediately want to re-read A Time of Gifts and his other books. Artemis Cooper and her husband, Anthony Beevor, are masters of the history of the 20th Century - on the personal scale and the national and international scales.

Does as the headline states. Describes in some detail the later years of Leigh Fermor. Worth five stars for what it does; the only reason I gave it four is because it was a rather routine account which contrasts with some of his own works. But if you want to know more about Leigh Fermor, especially post WWII, this is well worth a read.

For those of us who read PLF's books about his walk across Europe under the gathering shadow of WWII, this biography is a helpful chronology and answers many questions raised in his narratives. The book shows us how a 4-year moratorium with a Romanian woman 16 years his senior, served as his University and how his travels set him up for the wartime service to which he was assigned.Cooper also does not shy away from the less charming parts of PLF's character, and one is left wondering what would have become of him if so many aristocrats had not come to his aid, and had the war not given him a purpose, and made him a hero.

I have very much enjoyed reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's own books, especially those describing his famous walk across pre war Europe. This biography covers some of the same ground, but aims to present a fuller picture of his life. In this, it succeeds, but without the charm of Leigh Fermor's own writing. It is carefully researched and written, with interesting illustrations. However, I did not find it as interesting as I expected, and agree with another reviewer who comments on the vast number of reasonably well known names dropped into the text. What I wondered was whether all these people who seem to have spent weeks and weeks exchanging visits had servants to change the beds, clean up after all the late night drinking, and cook their meals. If not, life must have been absolutely exhausting, and I am speechless that anyone could stand the pace. 'Paddy' and Joan led strange lives, not settling down to 'normal life' , borrowing people' houses, and having passing affairs with various friends. 'Paddy' is said to have been a delightful person, excellent company, kind and generous, but this doesn't really come across in the book, and I didn't warm to him as I would have expected to from his own writings. Quite a shock, really

You won’t be reading this book unless you have read Fermor’s own accounts of his life and if you have managed that there is great enjoyment here. I particularly enjoyed the authors explanations behind some of the ‘creative changes’ that Fermor had made in the originals particularly’Time of Gifts’Like the books it’s a challenging read having so many references to names, people, locations and countries.Nevertheless it’s an entertaining read and provides more evidence.( if we needed it) as to how remarkable and unique this man was. How did he acquire so many friends? The answers in the reading but still totally amazing. If one could have a dream dinner party and could invite anyone- past or present to be there, I would select ‘Paddy’ as he known through the book, but I doubt anyone else would get a word in 😂😂

This isn't biography but hagiography. Darling 'Paddy' can do no wrong, is a wonderful, generous, charming human being, despite mumping off everyone. He falls in with a group of people and they pay for him. He arrives at people's houses and, we are told, they beg him to stay. He arrives at an inn - a place where people PAY to stay - but apparently the innkeepers insist he lodge there for free. He is simply marvelous whatever happens and no other possibility is allowed. The entire book is implausible. I forced myself to read to halfway, just for the morsels of detail about the places he visits, but ultimately you have to wade through too much sickly adoration of PLF, and I gave up. Charity shop.

I’ve reviewed virtually all of his books and, although I had minor reservations about ‘Marni’ and ‘Roumeli’, thoroughly enjoyed them, including both ‘The Travellers Tree’ (…voodoo and the Caribbean…) and 'The Violins of Saint Jacques', the only fiction he wrote (…brilliant…) and apparently adapted as an opera…Artemis Cooper has taken on a Herculean task, painting a brilliant word picture starting with PLF’s difficult relationship with his parents (it was apparently like living with a boisterous puppy) and his problems at school. The outcome was his decision to walk, in 1933 and at the age of 18, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (he uses the old name of Istanbul) living on a budget of £1 a week.For the duration of ‘A Time of Gifts’ and ‘Between the Woods and the Water’ Artemis is effectively at his shoulder, clarifying points of detail about the people he meets and the places he visits. It’s made more fascinating by the fact that the scourge of Nazi Germany is descending inexorably across Europe and the Jewish population of those countries. The place names and the borders between countries are those of the 1930s and can be slightly confusing; I was also surprised at the number of people with double-barrelled surnames.‘Between the Woods and the Water’ ends with the enigmatic comment ‘To Be Concluded‘, at the point where the Danube forms the boundary between Romania and Yugoslavia. The material for ‘The Broken Road’, the final part of the journey comes from many sources including a manuscript discovered in 2008 and written sometime between 1963 and 1964. In 1965 he visited Romania and again met with Princess Balasha Cantacuzene. Although they hadn’t met since he left for the war in 1939, she had kept his diary of the final part of his walk; for some reason, it was never fully collated with the subsequent manuscript.Artemis tells how, in the early 1970s, PLF returned to what he described as ‘The Great Trudge’, trying several times to complete the manuscript but, on his death in 2011 and based partly on that incomplete manuscript of the final part of the narrative plus her earlier discussions with the now-elderly PLF, she took up the challenge of writing the concluding story of his walk. I found it virtually impossible to distinguish between her style of writing and that of PLF himself.‘The Broken Road’ (he never actually entered Constantinople) also gives a lot of background to ‘Marni’ and ‘Roumeli’ plus details – Artemis is very circumspect – of PLF’s subsequent sojourn in monastic retreats in both Greece and elsewhere. She also brings to life the story of his wartime SOE life with the Cretan resistance and, along with Billy Moss, his successful abduction of the German General Kreipe (made into the film ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’ starring Dirk Bogart). Dressed in German uniforms, and with the General stuffed in the back of his own staff car, they bluffed their way through a number of checkpoints: it was fortunately dark since Billy was wearing puttees – something no one in the German army had worn since World War I…Although there were many women in his life PLF married just the once, to Joan Rayner in 1968; they spent much of the following years at the house they built just outside Kardamyli on the Marni Peninsula.It’s an absorbing story and an invaluable backdrop to Paddy’s books filling in a lot of detail about a unique and fascinating individual accurately described by a BBC journalist as a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Green.

This is a diligent but sometimes flat portrayal of a great artist and greater character, with much on how and where he lived but long stretches without enough on why. Its the opposite of a hatchet job - I loved him just as much at the end as I did before reading the book. Part of the problem with the book is that Cooper is such a howling name dropper, with dozens of names she wouldn't/couldn't omit for whatever reasons when working with all that material. PLF was a name dropper too of course but he transcended all of that by his unbelievable curiosity and his personal courage. There is far too much about Buffy and Binky and Bipsy & agreeable weekends of charades in palaces, and far too little about his inner imaginative life. I did wonder if the core relationship with Joan and their decision (was it a decision?) not to have a family was important - were there a pile of regrets that held him back from writing more?The fact that he was a bit of a rotter is not a problem at all - of course he was. That he could at times be very insensitive to his surroundings is intriguing and I think the author could have dug away at that more. But when its good its a wonderful book - she tells the same stories as PLF but unpicks the way the stories evolved. Whats actually quite thrilling is how much the stories were indeed true and the book closes on that lovely note. I had previously had a suspicion he might be a bit like David Niven who was obviously much loved and wanted to entertain everyone, but was it seems incapable of telling the truth, or a tale the same way twice. PLF's own books tried to pick that point up by having a dialogue between his young and adult selves but I must confess I was a bit worried the written record would prove to be a series of over-embroidered fantasies. Not a bit of it; though some embroidering went on the reality was often far stranger.His knowledge and the way he acquired it was magnificently haphazard. He was a brave & funny man, a loyal friend, an adornment to Greece and England, and a thrilling unique writer who had led me into so many enchanting areas of literature. He was adored and quite right too.