LETTERS FROM ANTEDILUVIAN EUROPE In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor Edited by Charlotte Mosley, London: John Murray, 2009, 416pp. In times of texting and sexting, Twittering and wittering, there is something antediluvian about epistolary collections – a whiff of fountain pens and headed notepaper, morocco-topped escritoires in long-windowed drawing rooms… Continue reading
Posts Tagged → The Broken Road
Highway maintenance – review of The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh Fermor
HIGHWAY MAINTENANCE The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mouth Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor, London: John Murray, 162pp, hb In 2011, Patrick Leigh Fermor became Patrick Leigh Former, and hundreds of thousands of devotees became doubly bereft. The first loss was the man himself, at 96 an antique in his own right, one of… Continue reading
The English Wändervögel
THE ENGLISH WÄNDERVÖGEL Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper, London: John Murray, 2010 On December 9th, 1933, an eighteen-year-old miscreant rushed through the rain at Tower Bridge to catch the Stadtholder Willem, about to hoist anchor and leave for Rotterdam. His luggage was light—a little money, a few letters of introduction, a knapsack, a sturdy… Continue reading