A portrait of Paddy done in Budapest in the 1960’s

I have been saving these images for some months now so that I could present them to you at Christmas; it is always good to have something new for Christmas!

Sent to me by a friend, the coat of arms is from the back of a chair that was in the von Berg house in Uri utca, Budapest when PLF stayed in 1934. It survived WW2, the Hungarian Revolution and Communism. There is a very detailed description of it in Between the Woods and the Water (pp 27, 29, 32 in the paperback edition). As we have written before:

Úri utca (Lord’s Street) is at the very heart of the Castle District and lining this ancient cobbled thoroughfare are the one-time palaces and townhouses of the old Hungarian nobility. Stop in front of number 15, a plain two-storey house, and you will be at the very core of Leigh Fermor’s Budapest. If the owner, Baroness Gloria von Berg is at home, you are likely to receive a warm welcome and a free tour of the very quarters in which PLF slept. It was her father, Baron Tibor von Berg who hosted him in 1934. From this hospitable house he explored Budapest in a way that few English travellers had achieved at that time.

The portrait is of Paddy done in Budapest during a visit he made there in the mid 1960s. It surfaced recently in the flat of an old friend of Paddy in Budapest, and has been seen before by very few people, and almost certainly its first appearance online. I hope that you enjoy it. How interesting that new items can emerge even after all these years.

A coat of arms from a chair at the house of the von Berg’s in Úri utca, Budapest

Merry Christmas to you all, and thank you for your comments and support over this past year. We still average around 10,000 visits per month. I do encourage you to use the search facility (upper right of page); it is quite excellent. If you have something you wish to know about Paddy, tap it in and hopefully you will find something to interest and inform you from over 900 posts.