The news about the opening of Paddy’s archive to the public was quite exciting. It may herald some new studies into the life of this gifted but flawed man.
I had a bit of a sneak around the National Library of Scotland website and found the following images which may form the start of the on-line digital archive mentioned in the press release. They include an unpublished poem by John Betjeman written on the back of an envelope.
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- Paddy’s passport issued in Munich to replace the one stolen
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- Unpublished John Betjeman poem on back of envelope
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- Paddy’s green diary before conservation
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- Patrick Leigh Fermor with Dirk Bogarde
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- General archive items
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- Sketch of Orthodox priest and and Hungarian vocabulary from Green Diary
Related article:
Patrick Leigh Fermor archive now fully available to public at National Library of Scotland
Patrick Leigh Fermor 
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The item referred to is the guest book from Kardamyli, which covers 1967 to 2007. This is part of the PLF collection at the National Library of Scotland and is referenced Acc.13338/541. This has been digital scanned and I shall supply an image to this website. It will, along with many other images from the collection in due course be made freely available online at the NLS website in due course, Best wishes, David McClay, John Murray Archive curator, NLS
Fantastic photos and scans!
Any idea what’s in the upper-right hand corner of the “general archive items” collections?
Across the page from a number of signatures, there appears to be some hebrew lettering (Shalom Shel ____ = Peace of …) and a sketch that is maybe the Lion of Judah or Czech lion and a kabbalistic looking hamsa.
Would love to know more…
No idea myself. Looks like a trip to Edinburgh may be needed!
A while ago I posted this catalogue of the contents of Paddy’s possessions, annotated quite amusingly by Paddy himself. This seems a most appropriate moment for it to be seen once again. Here it is:
Lawrence S. Freundlich PERMALINK
December 15, 2013 7:24 pm
In a privately circulated edition of his celebrated “Christmas Crackers,” John Julius Norwich gifts us with the following archival remnant from PLF. I have it through the courtesy of my English friend and former Macmillan publishing executive JFK Ashby.
“When my daughter Artemis was researching her dazzling biography of Paddy Leigh Fermor in his house at Kardamyli she went through his files and came across the following:
Detached Oddments
Not very Important Oddments
Own Unsorted Oddments
Unsorted but Interesting
Oldish—Needs Sorting
Badly Needs Sorting
Current: Unsorted
Current: Various
Vol III: Odds and Ends
Crete: Mixed Bag
Tiring Duplicates
Disjecta Membra
Scattered Intractables
Official Bumph
Flotsam
On 21 July 1988 Sotheby’s held a sale of English Literature and History. Let 171 was described as follows:
Fermor (Patrick Leigh) THE AUTOGRAPH
MANUSCRIPT OF “A TIME OF GIFTS”
c. 450 pages, the majority written on rectos only, some on both
sides, the first chapter on lined foolscap sheets, some cartridge
paper, others line, heavily revised and corrected, revised pages
frequently written on separate sheets and pasted or clipped over
the original, corrections or elucidations often in red ink, foreign
or difficult words printed in the margin, many sheets with
encouraging notes to the typist, often stapled of stitched with
coloured thread into gatherings, generally of ten pages, no date
[before 1977].
The estimate was L800-1000. It actually sold for L1,375.