We are fortunate to have a number of articles by the American writer Ben Downing on the blog. Downing specialises in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British social life and literature. His three part A Visit with Patrick Leigh Fermor can be found here. The following article is his review of Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Life in […]
In the winter of 1933, eighteen-year-old Patrick (“Paddy”) Leigh Fermor set out to walk across Europe, starting in Holland and ending in Constantinople, a trip that took him almost a year. Decades later, Leigh Fermor told the story of that life-changing journey in A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, two […]
Part 3 of Ben Downing’s meeting with Paddy in 2001 at Kardamyli. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. by Ben Downing. This text originally appeared in issue 165 of The Paris Review, Spring 2003. There was an incident dating from this vagabond period—from 1956, to be exact—that I was keen to ask Paddy […]
Part 2 of Ben Downing’s meeting with Paddy in 2001 at Kardamyli. Read Part 1 here. by Ben Downing. This text originally appeared in issue 165 of The Paris Review, Spring 2003. Already familiar as I was with the main events of Paddy’s military career, I asked him to fill in the gaps. What had […]
It has been said of Ulysses that, were Dublin ever obliterated, the city could be substantially rebuilt by consulting its pages. Along these lines, if all Europe were, God forbid, laid waste tomorrow, one might do worse than attempt to recreate it, or at least to preserve some sense of its historical splendor and variety, […]
Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the most popular blog posts was something I added a couple of years ago – Paddy’s eye for detail: Ian Fleming, Bondage, James Bond and Pol Roger. With the launch of the new Bond movie plus the popularity of A Fifty Shades of Grey (you should see the search terms that […]
It is all too easy get overly romantic about Romania, which is said to have come second only to Greece in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s affections. Whilst I can agree wholeheartedly with William Blacker when he describes the Romanian people as some of the most charming and civilised he has ever met, his story of his […]
by Wes Davis First published in The Nation, December 2010 At a Chelsea-to-Richmond boating party held sometime in the early 1950s, the Duchess of Devonshire, then a beautiful young woman of 30, met a dashing man, some five years her senior, who was dressed as a Roman gladiator and armed with a net and trident. […]
In 1958, Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote the script for the film The Roots of Heaven, produced by Darryl Zanuck and directed by John Huston. In 2001, he recalled some of his time spent on location, during the shooting of the film: ‘The heroine of the film was Juliette Gréco, to whom Darryl [Zanuck] was deeply […]
As you know I trawl the net for Paddy related material to create the best online source of information about PLF and his friends and associates. Some of you may have come across this essay that attempts to analyse Paddy’s style and his literary achievement. In my view it is just one of many that […]
