William Stanley Moss

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"Billy" Moss with his Russians

There appears to be no surviving obituary for Billy Moss (if anybody can find one please contact me). His Wikipedia page has to serve as a substitute.

Ivan William “Billy” Stanley Moss MC (1921–1965), was a British army officer in World War II, and later a successful writer, broadcaster, journalist and traveller. He served with the Coldstream Guards and the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He was a best-selling author in the 1950s, based both on his novels and books about his wartime service. He featured events of his SOE years in Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe (1950), which was adapted as a British film released under the main title in 1957. Moss travelled around the world and went to Antarctica to meet the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

He was known as William Stanley Moss, or I. W. S. Moss, or W. Stanley Moss, or plain Bill or Billy Moss – but never as “Stanley Moss”.  Stanley was the surname of a female forebear.  All family members (including Billy and his two daughters) were given this name, which was considered part of the surname, though not hyphenated.  Much like “Leigh Fermor”.

Early life and education

William Stanley Moss, (called Bill or Billy) was born in Yokohama, Japan. His mother was a White Russian émigrée, and his father, an English businessman. The family survived the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Moss attended Charterhouse in England (1934–39).

Soldier

In the autumn of 1939, Moss, aged 18, had just left Charterhouse and was living in a log cabin on the Latvian coast. By the outbreak of war, he reached Stockholm, and succeeded in crossing the North Sea to England in a yacht. After full training at Caterham, he was commissioned as an ensign into the Coldstream Guards. He served on King’s Guard at the Court of St. James’s punctuated by bouts of Churchillian duty at Chequers.

Posted to reinforce the 3rd Battalion, the Coldstream, after the losses at Tobruk, Moss fought with Montgomery’s Eighth Army chasing Rommel across North Africa to Alamein and finished up the campaign in Chianti and Pantellaria. He returned to Cairo, where he was recruited into Force 133 of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Tara, Cairo

In 1943 in Cairo, Moss moved in to a spacious villa, with a great ballroom with parquet floors, which four or five people might share. Moss chose to live in the villa rather than the SOE hostel, “Hangover Hall”. He moved in alone at first, then bought his Alsatian puppy, Pixie; Xan Fielding, who had worked in Crete, joined him. Next was Countess Zofia (Sophie) Tarnowska, forced to leave Poland in 1939 by the German invasion, followed by Arnold Breene of SOE HQ. Finally Patrick Leigh Fermor, an SOE officer who had spent the previous nine months in Crete, joined the household. The villa’s new inhabitants called it Tara, after the legendary home of the High Kings of Ireland.

Sophie Tarnowska and two other women had been asked to share the house with the SOE agents, but only she went through with it, after the men pleaded with her not to let them down. Estranged from her husband, she moved in with her few possessions (a bathing costume, an evening gown, a uniform and two pet mongooses). She protected her reputation while living in the all-male household by the invention of an entirely fictitious chaperone, “Madame Khayatt”, who suffered from “distressingly poor health” and was always indisposed when visitors asked after her. The group were later joined by SOE agents Billy McLean, David Smiley returning from Albania, and Rowland Winn, also active in Albania.

Tara became the centre of high-spirited entertaining of diplomats, officers, writers, lecturers, war correspondents and Coptic and Levantine party-goers. The residents adopted nicknames: “Princess Dneiper-Petrovsk” (Countess Sophie Tarnowska), “Sir Eustace Rapier” (Lt-Col. Neil (Billy) McLean), “the Marquis of Whipstock” (Col David Smiley LVO OBE MC), “the Hon, Rupert Sabretache” (Rowland Winn MC), “Lord Hughe Devildrive” (Major Xan Fielding DSO), “Lord Pintpot” (Arnold Breene), “Lord Rakehell” (Lt-Col Patrick Leigh-Fermor DSO) and “Mr Jack Jargon” (Capt W. Stanley Moss MC). By the winter of 1944, the Tara household had to leave their battered villa and move into a flat. Their landlord secured their eviction on the grounds that the villa had not been let to “Princess Dneiper-Petrovsk” et al., as stated on the villa’s name plate.

Abduction of General Kreipe

Moss is best remembered for the capture of General Heinrich Kreipe on Crete and abduction of him to Egypt, in April and May 1944. He and Leigh Fermor led a team of Cretan Andartes, part of the Greek resistance.

Moss and Leigh Fermor thought of the Kreipe abduction one evening in the Club Royale de Chasse et de Pêche (Royal Hunting and Fishing Club) and planned it during the winter of 1943. On the last evening before Moss and Leigh Fermor set off, Smiley presented Moss with the Oxford Book of English Verse – his companion from Albania – for good luck.[2] McLean gave him a complete Shakespeare dedicated, “To Bill, with best of luck for Guernsey, Bill”.

Promoted to the rank of Captain, at age 22 Moss set off with Leigh Fermor, age 29, to Crete in 1944. Leigh Fermor landed by parachute. Moss, unable to jump due to cloud cover, followed several weeks later, landing by boat on the south coast where he joined Leigh Fermor, Andartes and other support. Walking north, they passed through Skinias, Kastamonitsa and Haraso. Just south of Skalani, they prepared for the abduction. Throughout the operation, as they travelled across Crete, they were hidden and supported by the Resistance and the local population.

Moss and Leigh Fermor, disguised as German soldiers, stopped the General’s car. With the help of their team, the driver was bundled out and the General and car seized. With Leigh Fermor impersonating the General, and Moss his driver, and with the General bundled in the back, secured by their Cretan team, Moss drove the General’s car for an hour and a half through 22 controlled road blocks in Heraklion. Leigh Fermor took the car on, as Moss walked with the general south into the mountains to Anogeia and up towards Psiloritis. Reunited, the entire abduction team took the general on over the summit of Psiloritis before descending, aiming for the coast. Driven west by German forces cutting off escape to the south, they travelled to Gerakari and on to Patsos. From here, they walked on through Fotinos and Vilandredo before striking south, finally to escape by ship.

After the war, a member of Kreipe’s staff reported that, on hearing the news of the kidnapping, an uneasy silence in the officers’ mess in Heraklion was followed by someone saying, “Well gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne all round.”

Post-war correspondence explains that Kreipe was disliked by his soldiers because, amongst other things, he objected to the stopping of his own vehicle for checking in compliance with his commands concerning troops’ reviewing approved travel orders. This tension between the General and his troops, in part, explains the reluctance of sentries to stop the General’s car as Moss drove it through Heraklion.

Moss was recommended for and received the Immediate Award of the Military Cross: “For outstanding courage and audacity.”

The episode was immortalised in his best-selling book Ill Met by Moonlight (1950). It was adapted into a film of the same name, directed and produced by Michael Powell and released in 1957. It featured Dirk Bogarde as Patrick Leigh Fermor and David Oxley as Moss.

The abduction is commemorated near Archanes and at Patsos.

Damasta Sabotage

Returning to Crete in August 1944, Moss led a resistance group consisting of eight Cretans and six escaped Russian soldiers in launching an ambush on German forces, intent on attacking Anogeia, on the main road connecting Rethymno and Heraklion. They chose an ambush site by a bridge in the Damastos location, one kilometre west of the village of Damasta. After the team destroyed various passing vehicles, among which was a lorry carrying military mail to Chania, the German force targeting Anogia finally appeared. It consisted of a track of infantrymen backed up by an armoured car. Moss and his group attacked the troops, Moss destroying the armoured car by dropping a grenade into the hatch. In total, 40 to 50 Germans and one Russian partisan were killed in the clash that followed. The operation is described in full in Moss’s book A War of Shadows (1952) and commemorated at Damasta. Moss’s exploits in Crete are recorded in the Historical Museum of Crete.

Macedonia and the Far East

After being promoted to Major, Moss served in Macedonia. Toward the end of the War, he served in the Far East, also described in A War of Shadows.

Marriage and family

In Cairo in 1945, Moss married Countess Zofia Tarnowska, his former housemate.  She was the granddaughter of Count Stanislaw Tarnowski (1837–1917) and a direct descendant of Catherine the Great of Russia.

They had three children: Christine Isabelle Mercedes, Sebastian (who died in infancy) and Gabriella Zofia. Initially living in London, they moved to Riverstown House, County Cork in Ireland. They later returned to London. They separated in 1957.

Writer and Traveller

Moss achieved success as an author with three novels, as well as his two books based on his wartime adventures. In addition, he travelled to Germany and wrote an investigation of post-war Germany, studying what happened to gold accumulated by the Nazis: Gold Is Where You Hide It: What Happened to the Reichsbank Treasure? (1956).

Disappearance of Reichsbank and Abwehr Reserves

Between 1952 and 1954, Moss joined up with his friend and former SOE agent, Andrzej Kowerski, (who adopted his cover name, Andrew Kennedy, after the war), in order to unravel a mystery of the final days of the Third Reich. In April and May 1945, the entire remaining reserves of the Reichsbank – gold (730 bars), cash (6 large sacks), and precious stones and metals such as platinum (25 sealed boxes) – were dispatched by Walther Funk from Berlin under armed escort to be buried on the Klausenhof Mountain at Einsiedel in Bavaria, where the final German resistance was to be concentrated. Similarly the Abwehr cash reserves of hundreds of thousands of dollars where hidden nearby in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Shortly after the American forces overran the area, the reserves and money disappeared.

Moss and Kennedy travelled back and forth across Germany and into Switzerland and corresponded with fugitives in Argentina, to research what had happened. They talked to many witnesses before finally establishing what had become of the treasure. What Moss and Kennedy uncovered, and the conclusions they reached on the various people responsible for the disappearances, have not been disputed to this day. The disappearance of Major Martin Borg, the US Military Governor of Garmisch-Partenkirchen at the time, has not been explained.[22] (And? who and what?)

Later, Moss and Kennedy went on to uncover the consequences of Heinrich Himmler’s order of 28 October 1939, which confirmed the Lebensborn programme. They researched what had become of the children born as a result of the order.

Antarctica

He continued to travel extensively first to New Zealand from where, on 14 February 1958, he flew in a Globemaster aircraft (with one engine cutting out six hours from his destination) to Scott Base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica to report on the arrival of the first Antarctic crossing achieved by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957-8 led by Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary. Months later, he returned to New Zealand in the icebreaker, The Glacier.

Sailing the Pacific

Taking to sea from New Zealand again, he sailed with Warwick Davies, John Ewing, Rex Hill and Bill Endean in Endeans’s 47 ft Alden-rigged Malabar ketch, the Crusader,[23] through the islands of the Pacific via Tahiti, Pitcairn Islands, Easter Island and the Galapagos Islands to Panama, eventually landing at Nassau, Bahamas in December 1959.
Jamaica

He moved on to Kingston, Jamaica, where he settled. He died on 9 August 1965, aged 44.

Christmas reading as recommended by Paddy – James Knox’s biography of Robert Byron

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In 2003 Paddy recommended James Knox’s biography of Robert Byron in the Spectator’s Christmas book selection. It is still available from Amazon. Maybe some of you will add it to your letter to Santa for this year.

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

James Knox’s biography of Robert Byron (John Murray) is a book we have been waiting years for, and it surpasses all expectations.

Outside strictly academic circles, in the early 20th century Byzantium was little known in England, but after the Great War things began to change. In the 1920s and ’30s, there was Steven Runciman at Cambridge and, at Oxford, Robert Byron. His was the Brideshead generation. How they managed between corks popping all day and parties all night to do more than hunt for Victorian china fruit in the afternoon remains a mystery.

In the heart of this chaos, fervent extra-curricular study was at work. Abstruse historical byways were trailed and notebooks were filled up. Byzantium was the goal, and soon, in his early twenties, Robert Byron, with several of his friends, set out on corroborative journeys, and on return published his findings. Europe in the Looking Glass — a sort of pan-European Three Men in a Boat — was soon to be followed by the brilliant Byzantine Achievement. The magic of Byron’s name opened every door in the Greek world, and The Station, a monumental and marvellous description of Mount Athos, remains unsurpassed. The Birth of Western Painting — an analysis and history of the earliest Byzantine inklings to the last of El Greco — is a defence and an assault. Classical Greece and the Renaissance both get it in the neck; so do Western Christianity and the Crusades, especially the Fourth. Some of his Quixotic giants turned out to be windmills, but much good was done and Byzantium emerged in glory. Youthful flair and high sophistication marked all his writings, and recondite knowledge was leavened by the surprising bonus of a hilarious narrative gift.

There’s a connecting chain running through all his travels: India, Afghanistan, Persia, Tibet, Russia; then he would bury himself in Savernake Forest for a winter of writing and hunting, setting out eastward again in spring. We are lucky to have James Knox to set down the details of this dynamic and many-sided figure, with his energies and angers and his unorthodox passions and his laughter.

In 1941 Byron was heading east again by the northern detour when a U-boat torpedoed his ship. He was 36. We can never know how many brilliant sequels to The Road to Oxiana were sunk off Stornoway.

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s complete SOE file now on-line

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I am very pleased to be able to present the complete SOE file of Patrick Leigh Fermor which was released to the public in August 2011 by the National Archive at Kew. My thanks go to Steven Kippax who is an SOE historian for gathering this information.

Click on the image to go to the new page which is in the Photographs section.

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor – Memorial Service

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A reminder that Paddy’s Memorial Service will be held at St James’s Church, Picacadilly at 11.00 am on Thursday 15 December 2011.

You are advised to arrive early. Map.

Obituary Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas (Nikos Ghika)

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From the left: Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, John Craxton, Barbara Hutchinson-Ghika, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lydia Aous, 1958

by John Craxton

First published in The Independent Wednesday, 7 September 1994

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas (Nikos Ghika), artist: born Athens 26 February 1906; Hon RA 1986; married 1961 Barbara Warner (nee Hutchinson; died 1989); died Athens 3 September 1994.

It was in 1945 that Peter Watson, the owner and art editor of Horizon magazine, asked me to look at some photographs of paintings by a Greek artist which had just arrived through the post. I remember well our enthusiasm for their freshness, clarity and strength. Their subject was inspired by houses in Hydra, the geometry of which was full of Mediterranean light. The style was a revitalised Cubism. It was at once decided to reproduce the paintings in Horizon.

That autumn I met the painter himself – Nikos Ghika – on his first visit to London. I found an immediate rapport with him, talking to this seemingly most English of Greeks, elegantly dressed, serious, charming, approachable. Like so many of my fellow artists then I had a deep desire to go south to the Mediterranean. Greece was very much on my mind. To find a sympathetic artist who would welcome me in his native country gave me added impetus. I mention this first meeting with Ghika, for it is quite typical of how European painters are often cross-pollinated by chance encounters.

Next year, in May 1946, it was my good luck to find myself in Athens. There began a friendship with Ghika which lasted till his stoic death 48 years later.

Ghika was always aware of the importance of influences, both unexpected and those discovered by intent. These happen all the time in the arts, in music especially. In 1922 Ghika determined at the early age of 16 that he would go to Paris to continue his studies as a painter. He was already a mature student, raised in a cultivated European Athenian society, and was gifted with languages. A year later he was exhibiting in the Salon des Independants. His first one-man show was held in 1927 and presented by Maurice Raynal. These years were a wonderfully fertile period for a young painter. Ghika enjoyed a close friendship with most of the leading painters and poets of the time, especially Jean Arp and Jean Helion, with whom he had a joint exhibition in 1934. On this occasion, Ghika showed paintings and some stunning bas-reliefs which reveal how rapidly his artistry had developed.

Back in Athens later in 1934 he began to plan the publication of The Third Eye, a Greek-language monthly review of arts and letters, in which Ghika and his friends published the works of avant- garde painters and sculptors, such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, and of writers not previously translated into Greek, among whom were Matila Ghyka, Alfred Jarry (Ubu-Roi) and James Joyce (Ulysses). Ghika himself was represented by his essays on ‘Elements of a Language of Plastic Art’, ‘Introduction to Harmonic Tracings’, and ‘Introduction to the Law of Numbers in Art and Technique’. The seeds of the modern movement had reached Greece, but were broadcast on very rocky terrain.

Once returned to his homeland, Ghika discovered that his rejuvenated philosophy of Cubism already had deep roots in medieval Greek painting: reversed perspectives, dismissal of the horizon line, economical use of colour and colour used emotionally rather than descriptively. These aesthetics are to be found in Byzantine art, for example in the mosaic of the city of Nazareth; in the church of Karye Tzami in Constantinople. What was dismissed in the 19th century as primitive, was now accepted as an escape from the tyranny of photographic representation. Painters were now free to find joy in transformation instead of being restricted by imitation. This was the freedom that Ghika reintroduced to his native country.

From his earliest years Ghika was an outstanding example of what a serious artist must be in order to survive. He was born with a naturally searching mind, the essential equipment of a creative artist. Furthermore, he was intelligent, human, and knowledgeable, inquisitive, learned, and daring. He possessed, too, a towering dignity and an aristocratic presence. Fortunately, he could also be mockingly witty, satirical, and full of fun. How else could he have translated so sympathetically Edward Lear’s ‘Yonghy-Bonghy- Bo’ into Greek?

Night ceremony

Ghika was in his element designing for the ballet and the theatre. He was an architect of originality, an illustrator of books, a superb etcher. He created some of the most lovely and inventive sculpture, much of it inspired by ancient themes. He animated whatever materials came into his beautiful hands. Deep down he was a classicist at heart; form and content always in happy union. There is no mistaking his style; he made no paintings that lacked underlying form and all of them respected the scale and dimensions of his canvases.

Into his sometimes hidden geometries he poured his poetry of light and darkness, infusing colour into his forms with unmatched confidence, inventiveness, and authority. Always hand in hand with imagination, he let the spirit of poetry invade the labyrinthine city and moonlit walls. Here were landscapes radiant and full of joy as well as of enigma and mystery, so rare these days when so much art is paper- thin.

Ghika was a lesson to all young artists for he drew endlessly, helped by an astonishing visual memory. I have never seen a drawing by him that was not searchingly elegant or clearly structural and informative. A recent book of his caricatures is my constant delight. His last years, despite the gnawing loss of his wife Barbara whom he mourned privately, and his failing eyesight, were borne with true stoicism. Fortunately, an Indian summer of recognition in his own land was a solace to him. This final period saw the publication of many superbly produced books on him and by him, among them Ghika: Drawings, by Evita Arapoglou (1992), and Ghika, by Jean-Francois Bonhomme (1993).

It is to the credit of the English that the first retrospective exhibition of his painting was held at the British Council in Athens in 1946, that he had six one-man exhibitions in London from 1953 onwards, and a major retrospective at the Whitechapel in 1968. He was elected an Honorary Royal Academician in 1986.

Like all great artists, Nico Ghika was an inspirer. He would rebuke all who claimed painting to be easy. Those whose way of painting seems to declare ‘I can do that, too’, would do well to gaze on Ghika’s art and recognise his individuality.

Related article:

Paddy’s Illustrator – John Craxton Telegraph Obituary

£1 a week Hook of Holland to Constantinople – Nick has a publishing deal!

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Great news by email from Nick. He has a deal with Arcadia who also publish the Banffy Trilogy which I adored.

Hello, all you good people who helped to fund my journey. I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve found a publisher for the book that’ll come out of the walk I’m starting in a few short weeks. It’s a company called Arcadia Books, and they seem pretty great. So all of you whose rewards include ‘a thank-you in the published book,’ I’m only a walk and a book away from fulfilling my promise.

 I wrote something about it on the blog.
 
Thanks all,
 
Nick

Read more about the deal on Nick’s blog.

Der letzte englische Gentleman

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I have at last made a start on the book review section. This is an attempt to bring together as many online book reviews as I can find. Most are pretty formulaic, repetitive and dull, but in the quest to build as complete an on-line archive as possible it has to be done. 

This is my most recent addition, to add also to the content of the site which is in German. There is nothing startlingly new here I am afraid, but it is an opportunity to practice your German (if you have any!).

Copy and paste into Google Translate if you need to.

by Sven Boedecker

First published in the Sonntags Zeitung, 4 July 2010

Abenteurer, Kriegsheld und Künstler: Mit Patrick Leigh Fermor können wir ein Griechenland entdecken, das inzwischen verschwunden ist

Als Hitler kam, ist er gegangen. Wie ein mittelalterlicher Pilger ist er 1933 von London nach Konstantinopel gewandert, hat in Scheunen und Schlössern übernachtet. Da war er gerade mal achtzehn Jahre alt. Über diese Reise hat er Jahrzehnte später zwei Bücher voller Esprit, Wissen und Lebenslust geschrieben – «Die Zeit der Gaben» (1977) und «Zwischen Wäldern und Wasser» (1986) haben Patrick Leigh Fermor zur Schriftsteller-Legende gemacht.

Aber der Engländer kann mehr als nur gut schreiben, er vollbrachte auch Heldentaten, für die er bis heute in seiner Heimat wie in Griechenland verehrt wird. Denn als Soldat sprang er im Zweiten Weltkrieg über dem Nazi-besetzten Kreta mit dem Fallschirm ab, lebte dort verkleidet als Berghirte und organisierte den kretischen Widerstand. Und dann entführte er 1944 in einer Nacht-und-Nebel-Aktion einen General der deutschen Wehrmacht und schmuggelte ihn nach Libyen. Dieser Coup machte Leigh Fermor später sogar zum Leinwandhelden, gespielt von Dirk Bogarde. Continue reading →

Wild Carpathia

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Sorry I just can’t help myself. Romania is so magical and beautiful; Paddy is reported to have said that after Greece he loved Romania the most. I have to share this video with you. It was funded by The European Nature Trust (TENT) which is based in Marlow, Berkshire. It’s mission is ” the protection and restoration of threatened wilderness, wild habitats and the wildlife living within them.” and it is focused upon Romania and Scotland.

This is a high quality version in English. Watch it and maybe support the work of TENT.

The all star cast includes lots of bears, even more mountains, and huge (but endangered) forests. Presented by Charlie Ottley, with Count Kálnoky, and HRH Prince Charles who thinks because he has some ancestral links to Vlad Dracul he has a ‘stake’ in the country.

Related article:

Lost in Transylvania

Cantacuzino Family Tomb in Baleni, Romania

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Of the old estate of the Cantacuzino’s, all that remains is a tomb—and even that has been left to the elements—“The memorial has value, but the monument isn’t part of our database,” maintains the Director of Culture.

Chris Bartholomew got in touch with me, all the way from Salt Lake City, to pass on his translation of an article he found in a Romanian newspaper about the family tomb of Balasha Cantacuzene, who was Paddy’s lover before the war.

Thank you so much for your Patrick Leigh Fermor Blog. I have been a daily reader for about a year now, and have a difficult time thinking of life without my connection to this community you have brought together.

Last night I came across three newspaper articles about Baleni, Romania where Paddy spent time with Balasa Cantacuzino (the romanian spelling of Cantacuzene). The newspaper is Viata Libera, I believe from the city of Galati.

I’ve translated one article about the family tomb in Baleni, and thought it might be of interest to you and your readers as it provides excellent details about this mostly unpublished chapter of Paddy’s life.

Regards,

Chris

Salt Lake City, Utah

by Cristna S. Carp

First published in Viata Libera 17 March 2009

Generations of Cantacuzinos, the famous Byzantine noble family who contributed crowned heads to Romanian principalities, sleep forever in the locality of Baleni, almost forgotten.

Of the manor house and their vast estate in the former Covurlui County, all that remains is a tomb, left crumbling and surrounded by decrepitude.

The Last Male Descendant

Stories of princes and princesses always have happy endings. This only happens in fairy tales.

In reality, the princesses buried at Baleni are crying and sobbing, and Leon [Balasa & Elena’s father], the final Cantacuzino male descendant from the south of Moldova, is turning in his grave. Artifact hunters have even broken into the tomb through the roof.

But not even recent historical times have been among the most favorable. The last inhabitants of the manor, the daughters of Leon, Balasa and Elena, as well as Constantin Donici, the husband of the latter, were deported by the Communists to Pucioasa. Of the descendants of the Cantacuzinos of Baleni, it seems that no one is left alive.

The Transformation of a Library

One night in March of 1949, the fate of the owners and of the estate was sealed. The solid and imposing manor was doomed to dust.

An existing remnant of a reddish wall vaguely reminds us of the one time benefactors of the local communities, of country celebrations filled with good friends, and the many hunting expeditions. This is where in 1927 Nicolae Iorga, after a conference in Galati, came to admire the “splendid library, with artistic and rare editions.” This is also where Prince Sutu once dropped in, in his personal airplane.

The precious library from Baleni, consisting of books in English, French, Russian, Greek, German and Romanian, was scattered in all directions, beginning on the night of its masters’ eviction. Some volumes came to an end burning in the bottom of a decommissioned root cellar, others were thrown into a nearby river.

As not to muddy themselves during the early months of spring, activists used the books, gathered by the Cantacuzinos from the ends of the earth, to pave their walkways. Peasants fashioned shoes out of the luxurious covers of the books. Only a few hundred have found their way to the ‘V.A. Urechia” library, deposited by the Party or from other donations.

Ten Souls

Constructed, most likely, at the beginning of the 20th Century, the tomb situated in the old village cemetery, is “crammed” between graves whose ordinary souls also ask for the right to rest in peace. The funerary monument includes a chapel, constructed above the tomb. The crypt is open to anyone who would like to light a candle above the heads of these ten souls.

The first of the resting places belongs to the brother of Leon. Next are buried the paternal grandmother and the parents of Leon. His father, Prince George Matei, died in Egypt, but was brought to Baleni, where he was given a very ceremonious funeral.

Ana Vacarescu [Balasa’s mother] faded from life in 1923, followed that same year by her husband, Leon Cantacuzino. Balasa died in 1976, in Pucioasa. Elena brought her to Baleni and a few years later, also had the privilege of placing the incinerated remains of her dead husband in the crypt.

In her turn, Elena was placed, in 1983, in her final resting place, by her former students. The final person buried in the Cantacuzino tomb is Georghe Farcas, a descendant of the noble estate. As the founders of the new village church, the Cantacuzino descendants are often mentioned, but only during religious services.

“The Memorial is Proposed for Designation”

The county cultural representative, councilman Marius Mitrof, told us that, concerning the value of the funeral monument, all circumstances point to the memorial receiving historical designation. A precedent exists, in the tomb of the Serfioti Family, from Filesti, and of the Crissovelon family, from Ghidigeni, found on the list of historical monuments. However, specialists still must take into account other parameters, such as its architectural value and the conditions of the construction.

The former mayor, professor Nicolae Nita, admits, not without regret, that the princes, who might bring recognition to the village, are unjustly forgotten. Not even the current mayor, Lica Oprea, knows how this civic treasure might be given recognition without financial help from the county counsel.

A first step would be, as Marius told us, to solicit historical designation for the tomb, from the Directorate of Culture. “We do not have this funeral monument in our database, but it follows for us to visit the site to collect information and to hold public discussion with the local administration,” he also said.

On the other hand, even with an official place in the register of historical monuments, the tomb in Baleni has no guarantee that it will remain intact. Neither is it assured that, if the manor, once visited by Nicolae Iorga, had survived the Communists, it would have been maintained and promoted any better by our contemporaries. Here as well, sadly, we have precedents. Proof that our mentality must also be changed.

Related article:

The troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear by Colin Thubron 

“He is consistently hunted by the occupying troops” – The commendation for Paddy’s OBE

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It is clear the original intention was to award Paddy a DSO, but that was struck out in favour of an OBE. Paddy was later awarded the DSO for his part in the Kreipe abduction. Interestingly they had difficulties with his surname … Fermor is crossed out and replaced by Fermer!

The commendation reads:

This officer infiltrated into Crete on 22 Jun 42. Since that date, by his courage, cheerfulness and steadfastness, he has been most valuable in maintaining morale among the civilian population in most difficult circumstances.

At different times he has been in charge of our revolutionary and espionage services in the prefectures of Canea, Rethymnon and Heraklion and has been responsible for providing much valuable information regarding enemy activity and intentions. In addition he has made a personal reconnaissance of the ports of Suda and Heraklion under most hazardous circumstances.

On his own initiative he has organised defeatist campaigns in the ranks of German troops. With complete disregard for personal safety … he has carried these enterprises through to a successful conclusion.

He is still in Crete, where his determination, devotion to duty, and steadfastness of purpose have been invaluable in helping the local population to sustain their faith in their allies.

He is consistently hunted by the occupying troops.

Signed by Head of Mission 9 Apr 43.

(requested that should the award be made there should be no publicity for security reasons.)

The source for this is the Kew public records office. This is not in Paddy’s SOE file.


Lost in Transylvania

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Campaigners are hoping tourism will play a role in protecting the vast Carpathian forest

by Clive Aslet

First published in the Financial Times, 5 November 2011

I am sitting in a wooden hut in a forest clearing near Tusnad, aware of a distinct tingling in a delicate area – the part of my body that touches the plank forming a seat. It’s the effect of the sulphur. Outside there are hot springs and mud baths that gently bubble but the purpose of the hut is to take the gas neat. Lean down and, sulphur being heavier than air, it feels as if too much wasabi has gone up your nose. Stay down and you might not get up again. Don’t the EU health and safety regulators have something to say about this? Heavens, no. This is Transylvania, a world that seems to share more with the lyrical novels of Thomas Hardy than modern Europe.

And it is beautiful. Raise your eyes to the hills and you’ll see an openness that is barely credible to someone from a crowded, industrialised country. Look down and you’ll find a deliciously scented pasture that is a tangle of wildflowers and herbs. No habitation is visible beyond the huts where the gypsy shepherds live and milk their goats. A man forks hay on to a ­rum baba-shaped stack. Otherwise there’s nobody to be seen – hardly surprising when you discover the road in this valley is so bad that it’s touch and go whether you’ll get over the bridge.

In this arcadia you wake to the sound of cowbells. The breakfast honey comes from bees that know nothing about the varroa mite that afflicts their cousins in more intensively farmed landscapes. The grapes clustering by the wall of the wooden church are warm from the sun. Geese cackle among the vegetables growing in the yards of the village houses. You might have one of them for dinner. Food is local here. It has to be – the nearest supermarket is hours away.

Most wonderful of all are the forests. Generally, visitors get only a distant glimpse of them but I’m lucky: I am here with Paul Lister, who founded the European Nature Trust to preserve wild spaces such as the Carpathian Mountains, which are covered in forest. The Carpathians form an arc through many central European countries but the Romanian part is the most biodiverse. There are, for example, more brown bears here than anywhere else in Europe. Lister believes this area should be regarded as Europe’s equivalent of Yellowstone National Park.

The son of one of the co-founders of MFI, the once-ubiquitous British furniture retailer that ceased trading in 2008, Lister first came to Romania in the 1980s, buying product for the stores. That was during the Communist era, when the forests were managed to textbook standards, not least because the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu loved to hunt in them.

Since his fall, in 1989, the state forestry service has been in decline. Large areas of woodland have been returned to the families who originally owned them but now might live far away. As the price of timber rises, so does the temptation to clear-fell the trees and take the cash. While light regulation might be charming in a sulphur hut, it also allows illegal logging. Corruption is rife. There’s no middle class to get hot under the collar about nefarious activities. Little by little, the forest is being nibbled away. Lister is devoting his considerable energy to saving it.

Lister had already turned 40 before he discovered his purpose in life. The turning point came when his father, Noel, suffered a serious illness 10 years ago. “I realised that it was pointless trying to compete with him any more. I could never be a better businessman than him, so I decided to devote my life to something that I’m passionate about: conservation.”

Initially, he bought the 23,000 acre estate – now called “reserve” – of Alladale in the Scotland Highlands, with the intention of “rewilding” it by flooding peatbogs that had been drained and reintroducing the wildlife that would have been there in the heyday of the Caledonian Forest. The great Carpathian Forest, half of which lies in Romania, is the other side of the coin. The Highlands might have lost its biodiversity but Transylvania is teeming with it.

Last month, the documentary Wild Carpathia had its world premiere in Bucharest. Lister financed the project in order to show urban Romania the wonder that lies on its doorstep. “Which other western country has such a charming rural life?” he says. “If only Romania would follow the example of Costa Rica, where a third of the forests are now protected. The future lies in eco-tourism.”

That industry is just beginning to appear in a number of lodges and guest houses, not generally de luxe but comfortable enough and set in heavenly surroundings. Having arrived at Targu Mures airport (Wizz Air flies direct from several European cities), located in the middle of an empty savannah, I set out with Lister to sample a few of them.

From the airport we drive to the Valea Verde Retreat at Cund: a journey of 40 minutes if, in this land of few signposts, you don’t get lost. It is owned by Jonas Schäfer, a German whose idealistic parents sold their house in Hamburg to come and help after the fall of Ceausescu in 1989. He is typical of the outsiders who forsee what Romania will lose if it goes down the wrong path. Accommodation is in a variety of rustic apartments formed from converted farmhouses. Before breakfast we hear the gypsy shepherd wheeling the milk churn up to the goats that are kept on the hillside; when we walk that way later, ­taking care to avoid some ferocious sheepdogs, the air is soft with the scent of the herbs that grow in the pasture. In the barn, which has been converted into a restaurant, we eat eggs from the hens roaming outside with shavings of truffle from the surrounding woods.

Next is Zabola, a yellow-walled chateau in Zabala, owned by the Chowdhury family, who returned to reclaim their estate, which had been expropriated by the Ceausescu regime. The 16th-century chateau sits in 34 hectares of parkland at the foot of the Carpathians. Guests stay in a recently renovated 18th-century outbuilding; a hunting lodge in the forest can also be rented for self-catering. Much of the food is from the two-acre kitchen garden. At dinner the dumb waiter rises, with theatrical effect, through the floor of the dining room, from the kitchen below.

Crocuses bloom in the fields along the bumpy road that leads to the tiny village of Zalanpatak. The charming guesthouse here is owned by Prince Charles, who through several charities works to conserve traditional buildings in the area. It has five bedrooms and a large wooden verandah overlooking the surrounding meadows.

I am tempted to say you might want to come and see this world before it disappears, but Lister believes that is defeatist. Visitors, he believes, will create a market for the felt slippers, home-made preserves and slipware pottery, perhaps helping the area to survive – along with the wolves and bears that live in the Carpathian forest.

Trophy hunters still go after the bears but other attitudes are beginning to prevail. Near Equus Silvania, a centre for riding in the wild Carpathian foothills west of Brasov, I spend an evening in a shaky wooden hide watching some of these fascinating animals. The shooting licence for this area has been bought by a local businessman who prefers to study bears, rather than kill them.

As dusk falls the bears sinuously slope up to food that has been left for them – the cubs gambolling, the mothers on the qui vive. You would not want to get between a mother and her cubs; the power of these animals is illustrated by the hide’s floor, part of which has been ripped away by a bear looking for food.

Equus Silvania is run by Christoph Promberger, a wolf biologist, and his wife, Barbara, a specialist in lynx. Both are campaigners for the forest and they arrange a helicopter to show me the extent of it. It is a warm day but rain is soon flecking the bubble of the machine as we swing towards the Piatra Craiului ridge. Roastingly hot in the summer but also damp, the conditions are ideal for trees. Below us, the hillsides are covered in a seemingly endless bristling mat of green pines, interspersed with the softer beech. There are few roads here and no sign of a dwelling, except for the occasional shepherd’s hut. Then into the headphones comes Barbara’s voice, pointing out an area – as bare as a badly shaved chin – where the trees have been felled.

Part of the problem is that forestry has little perceived value; according to Erika Stanciu, head of forestry for the Danube Carpathian programme at the World Wildlife Fund, it isn’t worth enough in exports for the government to make it a priority.

Over a plate of goulash on a terrace beside the charming Piata Sfatului square in Brasov, Lister unfolds two strategies for saving the forests. One solution is to unlock the carbon credits granted to countries such as Romania under the Kyoto Protocol, intended as a financial reward for not creating emissions that would otherwise have occurred. The other is rural development, a major plank of which must be tourism.

Little tourist infrastructure exists in rural Transylvania but that is part of its essence. You might not quite be in the position of Adam and Eve seeing a newly created world but you will certainly find it easy to be alone. At Equus Silvania I have breakfast with a woman from Switzerland, a country with grand mountains of its own, but who comes here to ride for a week or two at a time. She tells me, “Switzerland is like a garden compared to this.”

Clive Aslet is editor-at-large of Country Life

Sex O’Clock High by Patrick Leigh Fermor

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“Sex O’Clock High” – Get out your dictionaries, standby to Google … reading this short article by Paddy for the New Statesman (written in 1963) is at once both a joy and a frustrating, dizzying cornucopia of colourful and fiendish alliteration (thanks to my friend Carl Hagan for leading me to this). I am reposting this as it was first published in the days when the blog had just a few visits a day. Now I hope that more of you can appreciate it .

Taken from the New Statesman archive, 1 March 1963. The author of The Traveller’s Tree and A Time of Gifts, Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor is the doyen of British travel writers. He is also the central figure of W Stanley Moss’s Ill Met By Moonlight, a true tale of derring-do in wartime Crete. Now aged 91, he has written only rarely for the New Statesman: perhaps this item taxed the sub-editors’ patience too far.

It was an iridescent August morning and the effects of morphia and onanism were wearing off. Sitting up, Jack sipped his Earl Grey. Then he slipped into the Isabella-coloured pantaloons and a pair of Blucher boots proffered by his plimsolled and Jesuitical Jeames, byronically knotted his lavallière, donned a cardigan and a spenser and threw on a raglan. Trying a gibus, a trilby, an Anthony Eden, a fedora and a tam o’shanter, he finally pulled a billycock over his ears, narcissistically fluffed out his imperial and his dundrearies and, putting a lucifer to his Henry Clay, strolled downstairs to the electronic brougham.

Jill, attended by her gamp-grasping Abigail, was waiting for him by the wistaria’d Belisha beacon, her marcelled pompadour peeping roguishly from a Dolly Vardon in sarsenet. Soon, however, the brougham broke down. (Lack of volts? of amps, ohms, farads or watts?) The Jehu whispered that Jeames was a Jonah. Jill panicked, but their neighbour, jovial, Good-Samaritan Tom – a true Nimrod, martial in a stetson fitted with a havelock, a macfarlane, knickerbockers and wellingtons – quixotically gave them a lift in his phaeton, leaving Jeames there with the titanic gladstone-bag. (It was Shanks’s mare for him: Hobson’s choice.) They bowled over the macadam, passing many a stanhope and many a victoria, past Boniface with his churchwarden stuffed with cavendish outside the Marquis of Granby, where a peeler saluted; they finally settled under the bougainvillaea. But the food? Would they have a Barmecide feast: dine with Duke Humphrey? Jim thought of wartime maconochies and murphies. But soon Jeames arrived and panglossian Tom declared that it was all Sir Garnett.

They sipped John Collinses and grog with their sandwiches and discussed a lucullan soubise while Jeames cooked an Arnold Bennett omlette, boeuf strogonoff and, though Jill was banting, a gargantuan Chateaubriand. They washed these down with a Toby jug full of negus followed by a jeroboam of Mouton Rothschild. (Saturnine Jeames, their Ganymede, a professing Rechabite but secret slave to John Barleycorn, pharisaically out-Heroded Herod by swallowing a dozen baby Guinnesses.) Hermetic bakelite yielded pralines of filberts and logan berries, and soon Tom was sadistically guillotining his pêche Melba into procrustean slices. Jill put a Maréchal Niel behind her ear and picked a posy of hyacinths, dahlias, eschscholtzias, zinnias and Lady Diana Manners, while Jack, their amphitryon – a true epicure – extracted Napoleon brandy from the tantalus and offered Tom a Romeo and Juliet.

How they laughed at Tom’s odysseys! Jill declared that their Homeric and stentorian Mentor was a regular Munchausen. He related that, to forget an Oedipus complex, he had once crossed from a zeppelin to a mongolfier over a volcano somewhere in the Atlantic (O, for an atlas!), and, in his halcyon days, had performed caesarians in the Americas and taken Wassermans in the Gilbert Islands, broken up manichaean cabals with colts, bowie knives and shrapnel, joined the Fabians in San Salvador, practised as a psychiatrist and cured some Hudson Bay cyprians of nymphomania and the lotharios of Baffin land of priapism, seduced vestals in Rhodesia with aphrodisiac cereals, played cicerone to a croesus in Saudi Arabia, haussmannized Washington with mansards, swapped sanbenitos for fermorite in Liechtenstein, galvanized vandals with sapphics, published clerihews in morse and braille, taught Monroevians Sir Roger de Coverley, diddled Jack Ketch in Vancouver with a coup de Jarnac, turned the Trotskyites of Gorki into luddites among the diesels, mithridatized himself against nicotine in Virginia, prosecuted paulicians for simony in Columbia, driven St Simonism out of the Sorbonne, won pyrrhic victories with half-nelsons over herculean apaches in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, performed veronicas with mackintoshes in Bolivia, buggered a Buchmanite in Tasmania, stolen a strad from a musical Wykehamist in the Dolomites, built a mausoleum for a Maxim-gun mogul, out-witted the dogberries of Port Said, and confuted the Arians of Alexandria. He had lost his burberry at the Derby but returned from the Cesarewitch with a tin Lizzy-load of bradburies. A Mae West once saved him from Davy Jones between the Behring Straits and the Humboldt current. He had ranted, Roscius-like, among the thespians of the Palladium, sold plutonium and ammonia to Zwinglians in Louisiana, hunted Reynard and Bruin with yahoos and mohocks beyond the Mason-and-Dixon line, eaten a shaddock in mistake for a greengage when struck by Daltonism in Smithfield, bowdlerized pasquinades for Huntingdonians in Ekaterinoslav, and been boycotted as a quisling and almost lynched by Stakhanovites in the Bodleian.

Over the Benedictine, Jill told a rocambolesque story of how, as a girl, in Paris, with her hair tied en cadogan, she had slipped on a melted esquimau by a Wallace and fallen into a vespasienne! Mesmerized by Tom, she only tittered masochistically when he said her spooneristic malapropisms were Freudian. It was turning into bacchanal.

Were her feelings for Tom just platonic, Jill mused. How namby-pamby Jack seemed after the other’s hectoring rhodomontades. Sitting on the edge of a chesterfield by a Chippendale davenport that evening, she heaved a maudlin sigh and unscrewed her Parker to write Jack a collins.

The Feast of SS. Michael and Gabriel – Paddy’s name day

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November 8th is the Name Day for Saint Michael in the Greek Orthodox church, and as the Greeks have a paucity of saints called Patrick, the tradition is that Paddy celebrated his name day using his second name Michael. The name day is considered to be more important than the birthday, and is marked by parties and gifts. 

Some of you may recall that the New Zealand writer Maggie Rainey-Smith happened to be in Kardamili in 2007 and somehow ended up at Paddy’s house and was able to join in the party.

“By 10.30am the service in his private chapel was over and we were seated in his lounge – books lining the walls from floor to ceiling: Nancy Mitford, Henry James, James Joyce – eating olives, meatballs, feta and drinking local wine.

On a person’s Name Day you are required to take a gift, and all I had with me was a copy of my first novel About Turns, which I gave to Paddy. He signed my copy of his own book with a personal inscription and a small drawing. We talked about Crete and my dad and his book on the Mani. I gushed, he charmed.

Then the singing began and Paddy was surrounded by adoring local women who toasted him with traditional Name Day songs.

At the end of the singing, Paddy stood and pretended to fire a pistol into the air (an old tradition where real pistols were once used). He is of English and Irish descent. Although his name is Patrick, his Greek Name Day is the day of Michali. Michael is the name he assumed while fighting for the Greek resistance.”

Maggie also took some video footage of local women singing to Paddy who does look pleased! (click image to play)




My sincere thanks to Maggie for letting us see this again.

Please visit Maggie’s blog where you will be able to read more about her visit and here you can discover her work as a writer.

You can read Maggie’s complete original article about her visit reproduced on the blog  here.

How to Kidnap a General – a review of Ill Met by Moonlight

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Patrick Leigh Fermor and Moss

Patrick Leigh Fermor and Moss in German Uniform Prior to the Abduction of General Kriepe

“There was a rush . . . our torches illuminated the interior of the car — the bewildered face of the General, the chauffeur’s terrified eyes . . . [The] chauffeur was reaching for his automatic, so I hit him across the head with my kosh [blackjack] . . . and George . . . dumped him on the road. I jumped in behind the steering-wheel, and . . . saw Paddy and Manoli dragging the General out of the opposite door. The old man was struggling with fury . . . shouting every curse under the sun . . . [We bundled] him into the back seat [and he] kept imploring, ‘Where is my hat? Where is my hat?’ The hat, of course, was on Paddy’s head.”

First published in Time magazine 4 September 1950

Why a German general’s hat should be on a British officer’s head is pretty much the gist of III Met by Moonlight. For as the staff car, driven by Author Moss, moved along the road in northern Crete, sentries at no less than 22 German traffic-control posts smartly saluted the behatted “general”‘ and waved the car on. They had no inkling that prostrate on the floor in the back seat lay the real general, with guns pointed at his head. Twenty days later, on May 16, 1944, kidnaped Major General Karl Kreipe was handed over to British authorities in Cairo, putting finis to what Harold Nicolson has called “one of the best adventure stories that I have read.”*

Behind the Lines. The scheme of raiding German-held Crete and trotting off with the divisional commander was the brain child of youthful Major Patrick Leigh-Fermor and Captain W. Stanley Moss, who had achieved the schoolboy dream of becoming secret agents. At their base in Cairo, they shared a villa and sampled the fleshpots of Egypt. It was in a nightclub that they first hatched the plot that was to land their party from a motor launch on the south coast of Crete.

The two Britons could depend on help from guerrillas and from intelligence corpsmen hidden in the hills. One British agent, a Cretan, actually lived next door to General Kreipe’s Villa Ariadne, near the north coast. Through him, Moss and Leigh-Fermor learned the general’s daily routine to a nicety—off to headquarters by car at 9 a.m., back in the evening any time after 8 or 8:30 p.m., depending on how many rubbers of bridge he stayed to play.

Slowly, painstakingly, the two agents planned a night ambush. Hidden guerrillas lay at vantage points on the road to the villa, a buzzer and torch flashes relayed warnings of the general’s approach to the waiting kidnapers, who were in German uniforms.

After the snatch, the general (who quickly became resigned and quite amiable) was marched from cave to cave half the length of Crete, while the furious Germans fruitlessly finecombed the island. By the time a Royal Navy motor launch nosed in to a southwest beach and took off both captive and captors, Moss and Leigh-Fermor knew that they had achieved their principal aim—to astound the enemy and make him the laughingstock of the local population.

Author Moss wrote his story in the mid-’40s, but the British War Office refused to let it appear then. Today, having reached the elderly age of 29, Moss is a bit abashed by the “22-year-old exuberance (almost bumptiousness) with which it was written.” Bumptious or not, it is one of the most melodramatic and audacious stories of the war.

*And notably more successful than another daring plan hatched in Cairo. In November 1941, British commandos under 24-year-old Lieut. Colonel Geoffrey Keyes made their way 200 miles behind Axis lines in an attempt to capture or assassinate Nazi General Erwin Rommel. At night, with cork-blackened faces, Keyes and his commandos achieved complete surprise, wrecked Rommel’s HQ with grenades. But Keyes was killed and Rommel was untouched: he had gone to a birthday party.

£1 a week from Hook of Holland to Constantinople – packing the rucksack

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With just over a month to go I asked Nick if he could provide us with an update on his preparations. Nick is absolutely delighted with the support that many  of you have given to him. Some by giving money. Others with offers of accommodation or contacts to help him on his way. Hopefully, we will have one more update before he sets out.

I have just over a month to go before starting my walk to Istanbul, following in Paddy’s footsteps. Ferries don’t leave from London these days, so I’m sailing to Rotterdam from Harwich, and from there will pick up his route to Dordrecht, and on towards Germany.

With my funding from the Globetrotters Club, I’ve bought most of my supplies. It’s kind of reassuring to know that despite 80 years of advances in technology and materials, and the growth of an entire ‘outdoors’ hiking industry, the most important things I could buy are still a rucksack and a decent pair of boots. Essentially I’ve just bought the same stuff Paddy did, but lighter and more waterproof. So while Paddy packed ‘different layers of jersey, grey flannel shirts’ and ‘a soft leather windbreaker,’ I have layers of merino wool and a wonderfully warm down vest. No hobnail boots, I’m sorry to say, but a pair of Scarpa Terra GTX boots, waterproofed with Goretex. And in place of an ‘old Army greatcoat,’ a lightweight Berghaus jacket.

During my journey I’ll be posting intermittently on afterthewoodsandthewater.wordpress.com – there’s a ‘Follow’ button, if you’d like to be informed when something new comes up. I may also be writing a weekly column for a newspaper – details are still to be arranged, so I can’t say more at the moment. It will surely be an interesting time to be walking through the heart of Europe, with the Eurozone bucking and writhing and its future increasingly uncertain … a reminder that the continent is still changing, is always in a state of flux, struggling with its identity, as it was when Paddy did his journey.

More to come before I go. For now, I’d just like to quote from James Kenward, Paddy’s great-nephew, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in London a few weeks ago. Paddy was clearly a huge influence and source of inspiration to him, and here are a few of his thoughts on what I’m setting out to do:

Personally I always find it difficult to understand why someone would seek to follow the line of someone else’s arrow … but the mission statement that emerged through our conversation seemed full of fresh intent and knocked the aforementioned out of me. Perhaps the very course of a great journey holds its own through time’s passing like the essence of structure provides timelessness to a heroic tale. The breadth of Europe will not cease to be a story and having such an incredible point of reference in Paddy’s writing adds another dimension. I think that Nick will dig deeply and write well of his journey and my hope and suspicion is that the seed of his inspiration — his regard for Paddy and his adventuring ways — will yield entirely new crop that Paddy would admire. Frankly his romantic masochism invested in and infected by a new age interests me — previously there was snow, and there will still be that — but imagine the frigging motorways.

Related article:

£1 a week – Nick explains the reason for his journey 

An evening in memory of Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

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A typically quaint translation from Google Translate of a press release from the Benaki Museum website about the handing over of the house at Kardamyli to the Benaki.

The original pdf in Greek is to be found here.

“The Benaki Museum hosted the evening Saturday, the 17th September 2011 an event dedicated to Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor. Acquaintances and friends from Greece and England, between in which the Ambassador of England Dr. David Landsman, the director British Council Richard Walker, the executors and the biographer, gathered at his home in area Kalamitsi Kardamili for a wine in memory of one the most beloved British Philhellenes. Education, warmth, unparalleled bravery, his liveliness and politeness of Patrick Leigh Fermor came alive again in the hearts of all that was also attended.

It was an emotional night. O Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor died on June 10, 2011, at age 96 years in Dumbleton, England. For many years he lived in Mani, who built a house he designed by Nick Hatzi. His relationship with the Benaki Museum keeps a long time;had contacts with Antonis Benaki Peace Kalliga later and maintained close friendships with the Director Mr. Angel Foundation Delivorrias. The Benaki Museum chose Patrick Fermor alive to donate his house, mediated by Tzannis Tzannetakis, and received at the Foundation after his death it. For several years it had been agreed by donors and Museum that the house will be used for hosting researchers poets and writers who visit Greece to work a few months. While for certain intervals Benaki Museum will have the option to rent the house to ensure the maintenance and hosting.

The coming months, once the full record library and archive and make the necessary maintenance of the house, the Administrative Committee of the Museum Benaki will make its modes of space. “The Patrick Leigh Fermor, moreover, were more Kardamylitis and less; a thoroughbred Englishman Maniatis ie, a Real Greek, a patriot would say, “said Director Museum Angelos Delivorias. He continued, “The love of even for Greece not only recorded many books has dedicated, and the choice of the place chosen to live.

It is this love shown by his decision to bequeath the home of the Benaki Museum, a spiritual body purveyor in the service of our country … From the Greeks and Greece also carried the words of my prayer for good katefodio, but the certainty that his departure would not be definite. Why do you remain vibrant traces the steps in Crete and the Peloponnese, Attica and Roumeli. As live will remain the narratives of his books, the memories of those who lived close by, the historical deposits of the altars of freedom, the breezes of a fascinating personality. The gratitude to the Benaki Museum in particular will, however, only be measured by the degree to fulfill the legacy and desires of the man who benefited. ”

The text of his speech Museum Director, Mr. Angelo Delivorrias

“Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of Patrick Leigh Fermor and equally dear fellow from Kardamyli

On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Benaki Museum and President, I welcome you to a celebration held to honor the memory of Patrick Leigh Fermor, fastening ties from now on you’ll connect with you and us. The Patrick Leigh Fermor, moreover, were more Kardamylitis and less; a thoroughbred Englishman Maniatis ie, a real Greek, a patriot, I would say. Even his love for Greece not recorded only in what books have devoted but also in the location chosen to live. It is this love illustrated by its decision to bequeath the house to the Museum Benaki, a spiritual body purveyor serving the site us.

The Paddy, as they called friends of the Sun during the Michael fellow, he was a mythical hero in life by history, an internationally acclaimed author of the rigorous critique of the fellow, a man of rare gifts integrity and high optimally. It is therefore coincidental that he was connected with that best available human capital of Greece, from the fighters in the Cretan mountains during the war as the residents Kardamili time of peace; the big painter and also the benefactor of the museum, Nick ChatzikyriakoGkika as the Tzannis Tzannetakis in Maniatis militant resistance against junta, known political and translator of the book for Mani also a friend of the Museum. In this short invitation I can not not mention Nick Hatzi, a brilliant architect, friend and him, from which the Fermor claimed, jokingly of course, the authorship of the plans of the house that hosts us.

Touched on only a few of those who truly elite Greeks were connected with him, because, as also several of the British friends, is no longer with us. By the way, but the tonight’s event would not be allowed to fail warmer thanks to the Benaki Museum executors, his Alexander Mitchell and Michael Casey, supervisors managers, the beloved Olivia Stewart in particular, and to Greeks supervisors, Anthony Masouridi, the Tonya and Giannidi Peter Tzannetakis, his two children Tzannes. We thank you, finally, the Artemis Cooper in advance for her biography of Fermor prepare, and from our side Peace Geroulanou with all worthy partners of the Foundation have already demonstrated practical interest for the protection and enhancement of this the house.

When she died by Patrick Leigh Fermor, say that the moments of Goodbye is anyway difficult. Being made ​​but still more difficult when they are leaving our own people. Friends who stood beside us in critical situations, we loved and our shortcomings. The Paddy had loved the Greeks and Greece. Greece, he chose to live and the Greeks to syngenepsei. From the Greeks and Greece also brought the the words of my prayer for good katefodio, but the certainty that departure would not be definitive. Why should remain Live traces the steps of Crete and the Peloponnese, Attiki and Roumeli. It will remain vivid narratives of books, the memories of those who lived close by, the historical deposits on the altars of liberty, the breezes of a fascinating personality.

The gratitude of the Benaki Museum in particular will, however, only be measured by the degree to fulfill the legacy and desires of the man who benefited. ”

Angel Delivorrias

Kardamili, September 17, 2011 “

Sir William Deakin, historian and founding Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford

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William Deakin and Josip Broz ('Tito') in Jajce, 1943

I thoroughly enjoyed Deakin’s book – The Embattled Mountain – which tells of his night-time parachute drop right into the midst of the ferocious battle for survival of Tito’s partisans around Mount Durmitor in Montenegro, and subsequent development of a very positive relationship with the future leader of Yugoslavia. One cannot but be amazed how these men were whisked out of academia, put in uniform and because of their language skills given the most important of missions. Today they would be micro-managed to death. Deakin’s mission to Tito is often subordinated by that of the dashing Fitzroy Maclean, but having read the accounts of both, I think that Deakin should be given huge credit for doing the groundwork and keeping the relationship going through some very difficult times. Treat yourself and buy Deakin’s book from Amazon.

by Michael Howard

First published in the Independent 27 January 2005

William Deakin was one of the last British heroes of the Second World War, and one who had a significant effect on its outcome. He began and ended his career as an Oxford don; but as a young officer in the Special Operations Executive it was largely his experience and advice that persuaded Winston Churchill to support the Communist partisans in Yugoslavia; thus confirming the position of Marshal Tito as national leader and, ultimately, the independence of his country vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

Frederick William Dampier Deakin, historian and university administrator: born 3 July 1913; Fellow and Tutor, Wadham College, Oxford 1936-49, Research Fellow 1949, Honorary Fellow 1961-2005; DSO 1943; Warden, St Antony’s College, Oxford 1950-68, Honorary Fellow 1969-2005; Kt 1975; married 1935 Margaret Ogilvy (née Beatson Bell; two sons; marriage dissolved 1940), 1943 Livia Stela (died 2001); died Le Castellet, France 22 January 2005.

William Deakin was one of the last British heroes of the Second World War, and one who had a significant effect on its outcome. He began and ended his career as an Oxford don; but as a young officer in the Special Operations Executive it was largely his experience and advice that persuaded Winston Churchill to support the Communist partisans in Yugoslavia; thus confirming the position of Marshal Tito as national leader and, ultimately, the independence of his country vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

Deakin was born in 1913 and educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a First in Modern History. He was elected a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, in 1936, but a more important step in his career was his introduction to Winston Churchill as a research assistant when the latter was writing his life of Marlborough.

When the Second World War broke out, Deakin joined the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars, but after two years he was seconded to SOE and posted to Cairo. There he found a ferocious battle in progress between the Foreign Office, which wished to support the Yugoslav monarchist resistance movement under General Draza Mihailovich, and a section of SOE, whose intelligence sources indicated that the only serious fighting was being conducted by the Communist-led partisan movement under Tito.

In May 1943 a small mission under Deakin was parachuted to Tito’s headquarters to investigate the situation. This providentially arrived just as Tito was having to fight his way out of a German encirclement in a battle that has become legendary to Yugoslav history. Deakin himself became part of the legend; not least because of the close relations he established with Tito himself as a result of their shared experience.

Deakin’s presence in Yugoslavia had become known to Churchill, and his report was enough to make the Prime Minister intervene between the opposing factions in London and Cairo, send his own mission to Tito under Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, and eventually order the transfer of Allied support from Mihailovich’s Chetniks to Tito’s partisans.

This provided Tito not only with increasing military aid but with an opening to the West that was to make it possible for him to sever his links with the Soviet Union after the war and establish a position of “non-alignment”. But the abandonment of Mihailovich and the perceived “loss” of Yugoslavia to the West has, in some quarters, never been forgiven, and Deakin’s part in it was to make him a highly controversial figure.

Deakin himself returned to Belgrade as First Secretary to the British Embassy for a year after the war, where he laid the foundations for his expertise in Yugoslav politics and cemented his friendships among politicians and historians who were prepared to speak freely to him, although they were barely on speaking terms with one another.

In 1946 Deakin returned to Oxford, but time for his academic duties was severely restricted by the demands made on him by Churchill, to whom he now became principal research assistant in writing his history of the war (The Second World War, 1948-54). It came to an end altogether when in 1950 he was appointed the first Warden of St Antony’s College. The college was funded by a French businessman, Antonin Besse, who intended it mainly for French graduates; but the French themselves showed little interest, the funds were insufficient and the university authorities themselves were not supportive. Deakin thus had to devote himself to fund-raising, and generous grants from the Ford and Volkswagen foundations eventually enabled him to put the college on a firm financial basis.

Much of his time was also dedicated to recruiting students from overseas, making the college an international centre unique in Britain, if not indeed the world. His cheerful presence, combined with the bubbling charm of his second wife, Livia (always known as “Pussy”), made the college a happy place from the very beginning.

By 1968 Deakin felt with good reason that he had done all that could be expected of him and, leaving behind a flourishing college, he retired to live in France; within reach of London (where he frequently returned to entertain his friends generously at Brooks’s or White’s) but equally accessible to Yugoslavia for the collection of material for a life of Tito which he was uniquely qualified to write. He never completed it.

His work The Embattled Mountain (1971) was a personal account of his own adventures in Yugoslavia and of the background to his mission, written in an effort to set the contentious record straight. But he will be remembered mainly for his account of German-Italian relations during the Second World War, The Brutal Friendship (1962), written while he was still at Oxford. His strength as a historian was an unbounded curiosity; his weakness a difficulty, especially as he grew older, in digesting his material into a coherent narrative.

The key role that Bill Deakin had played in the war may have made him political enemies, but his modesty, friendliness and charm made it impossible to dislike him. He was much honoured: a DSO and knighthood from the British government, a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur from France; the Russian Order of Valour, and the German Grosse Verdienstkreuz.

Related article:

Sir Fitzroy Maclean Bt: Obituary 

Post-operation interrogation of Patrick Leigh Fermor

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A very revealing file from Paddy’s debrief upon his return from Crete. He operated under the cover name of Michaelis Frangielakis. It is very extensive discussing day-to-day operations and organisation in Crete. An interesting conclusion is that Italian interrogations of prisoners were less brutal than those of the Germans, and were more successful being psychologically more sophisticated: “The Italians understood the Mediterranean mind and methods much better than the Germans.”

Alexander Maitland talk at RGS on the 31st October – postponed

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I just head about this in an email. It looks like the event will be rescheduled for 12 December 2.30-4.00 pm.

For further information best to contact  the RGS. Details: Telephone: 020 7591 3044 Email: showcase@rgs.org.

Related article:

Event – Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Appreciation by Alexander Maitland, FRGS

 

 

The last of a magical breed

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From Judy Stove who writes for The New Criterion.

“Readers may like to know that there is an excellent article by David Mason about PLF in The New Criterion, September 2011.  Unfortunately the online version is for subscribers only or by purchase.

Mason, as a young man, and his then wife visited PLF and Joan at Kardamyli.  He tried to impress with quoting Waugh and Anthony Powell, only to find that PLF and Xan Fielding actually knew these people…A funny and poignant memorial, one of the better PLF tributes going around.”

David Mason’s article begins thus:

The death of Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor on June 10 at age ninety-six has been mourned in virtually every major newspaper in the English-speaking world. He has been celebrated as the last of a magic breed, the Byronic hero, a man of action who was also one of our most vigorous writers. The fuss would have surprised Paddy, who never assumed his contributions were admired and became nonplussed when anyone heaped praise on his head. The long-refused knighthood he finally allowed to be conferred upon him in 2004 did nothing to elevate him above Greek shepherds or the myriad visitors to his villa in the southern Peloponnese. Paddy was youthful and convivial to the end, with an attractive and genuine interest in the world outside himself. People couldn’t get enough of him.

Yet his readers had to learn patience as the books arrived from his pen at a snail’s pace—he didn’t learn how to use a typewriter until in his nineties …

If you are a subscriber you can read the article here. If not go to the same link and you can access this one article for $3.00.

Robin Gibb and The Soldiers launch the 2011 Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal

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Buy your poppy, and wear it with pride.


… and buy the song to donate to this most worthwhile of causes. Remember that the only year a British serviceman has not died on operations since 1945 was, ironically, the year of 1969 when we were asked to keep the peace in Northern Ireland and were welcomed by the Catholic populace.

Joanna Lumley’s Greek Odyssey – tonight in Crete

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Apologies for a second post so soon but it appears that in tonight’s episode Joanna will visit Crete and according to the blurb ‘… in the high remote mountains she spends time with the shepherds who played a key role fighting the Nazi occupation alongside British SOE Agent, Patrick Leigh Fermor – whose exploits became the basis for the film Ill Met by Moonlight.’ Don’t expect too much accuracy but I am sure that there will be oodles of gushing admiration for Paddy. 

Apparently ‘… Crete is also the birth place of Zeus and the home of raki, a local firewater that fuels traditional festivities.’ Enjoy but only available in the UK … and I am currently in Romania. 😦

Intimate portraits from Kardamyli by Miles Fenton

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Some delightful images of intimate corners of Paddy and Joan’s house in Kardamyli by Paddy’s nephew, Miles Fenton. These pictures were taken in 2009.

As you put some lovely photos of my uncle’s house in Kardamyli I thought you might like to see, and perhaps post, some of my photos of his house on your site.

These are, apart from the usual views, vignettes showing some of the more unique and charming architectural details.

Click an image to increase its size and to start the gallery.

Joanna Lumley’s Greek Odyssey

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Let’s have a nice interlude from Crete and the Kreipe abduction and follow the ever lovely, and not too intellectually taxing Joanna Lumley as she experiences an ‘Odyssey’ through and across Greece, the country that Paddy loved so much. She may come out with blinding glimpses of the obvious – about Byron “he was one of our greatest poets” and “his mind was full of poetry” – but when she meets an old man who was the only survivor of a Turkish massacre her tears are as genuine as can be. She is a British National Treasure and she is in one of the most beautiful countries in the world.

You can catch up with the whole series here on ITV Player.

A map of Crete as drawn by Paddy on operations in Crete

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This map was  hand drawn by Paddy, probably whilst on operations in Crete 1943-44, including, perhaps, a self-portrait. The map is from Paddy’s SOE file.

The reverse of the map …

The drawing is typical of Paddy’s style. Compare it with this sketch sent to us by John Stathatos, about which John tells us:

This delightful sketch of himself in Cretan dress was penned at the top of a letter to my mother dated 17th November, 1944; as he explains, “I have been lost again in a forest of whiskers for about three weeks, and my old mountain chums are down in the plains now, looking incredibly wild and shaggy”.

"I have been lost again in a forest of whiskers for about three weeks, and my old mountain chums are down in the plains now, looking incredibly wild and shaggy"

Related article:

Traveller’s Rest by John Stathatos

The only survivor of the devastating volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée

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The ex-convict, Louis-Auguste Cyparis (aka Ludger Sylbaris), as billed as the last survivor of St. Pierre on this Barnum and Bailey Poster

A nice short piece by Simon Winchester, which, if true, adds something to our knowledge around Paddy’s story in The Violins of Saint Jacques.

The Violins of St Jacques, Patrick Leigh Fermor. 

I think this may be my favourite book in the world. I was asked to write the preface for the Oxford University paperback edition. It’s about the eruption of Mt Pelée in 1902 on Martinique. It sent this thing, a glowing cloud, a nuée ardente, ash and lava and hot air rolling down the hillside. It completely devastated the town of St-Pierre and there was one survivor out of a population of 30,000. It was the worst volcanic disaster of the century, until the tsunami of 2005. Before that it was Krakatoa in 1883 when 40,000 people died, but most of those died from the tsunamis that followed the eruption.

Tsunamis were detected all around the world after that eruption.

Anyway, there was a ball being held in St-Pierre that night and, of course, everyone at the ball died, but the way it’s written is that he supposed all the guests survived and the party continued under the water. Fishermen say that a few miles out to sea when they are waiting for the fish they fancy they can hear music under the water.

Who was the survivor?

Louis-Auguste Cyparis. He was in prison and that’s what saved him, the only window was a narrow grating in the door. He was bad guy. A very violent man. I think he’d killed someone in a drunken fight. He went on to be a celebrity with Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. I love all Patrick Leigh Fermor’s books, but this is his sweetest.

From The Browser

The Wikipedia page devoted to  Louis-Auguste Cyparis

Read more from the blog about The Violins of Saint Jacques

The oral heroic poetry of the Kreipe kidnap

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I have extracted this from a fairly long book review about Professor M I Finley’s 1978 revised edition of his book The World of Odysseus. It has a fascinating section about an oral heroic song from Crete that is about Paddy and the Kreipe abduction, and how it had evolved in just the few years since the end of the war.

From Triumph of a Heretic by Bernard Knox, first published in the NYRB 29 June 1978.

It is now more than two decades since the Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge (who was then an ex-professor from Rutgers) published a book which in a limpid, hard-hitting prose and with a bare minimum of footnotes attempted to draw “a picture of a society, based on a close reading of the Iliad and Odyssey, supported by study of other societies….” This is how Professor Finley characterizes the book now, in the preface to a revised edition which makes only minor changes in the original text but adds two valuable and stimulating appendices, replying to criticism and bringing the argument up to date. He goes on to claim that “the social institutions and values make up a coherent system” which, however strange to us, is “neither an improbable nor an unfamiliar one in the experience of modern anthropology.” The fact that the later Greeks and the nineteenth-century scholars found it incomprehensible on its own terms he dismisses as “irrelevant” and adds that “it is equally beside the point that the narrative is a collection of fictions from beginning to end.” ….

… Oral heroic poetry is not a medium that preserves historical fact—as Finley pointed out, with a reference to the Chanson de Roland, which made out of a Basque attack on Charlemagne’s rear-guard an assault by Muslim beys and pashas, all carefully identified by names which are “German, Byzantine, or made-up.” A modern example, from the Second World War and from Greece itself, strengthens his case and gives a fascinating glimpse of epic “history” in the making.

In 1953 the late Professor James Notopoulos was recording oral heroic song in the Sfakia district of western Crete, where illiterate oral bards were still to be found. He asked one of them, who had sung of his own war experience, if he knew a song about the capture of the German general and the bard proceeded to improvise one. The historical facts are well known and quite secure. In April 1944 two British officers, Major Patrick Leigh Fermor and Captain Stanley Moss, parachuted into Crete, made contact with Cretan guerrillas, and kidnapped the German commanding general of the island, one Karl Kreipe.

The general was living in the Villa Ariadne at Knossos, the house Evans had built for himself during the excavations. Every day, at the same time, the general was driven south from the Villa to the neighboring small town of Arkhanes, where his headquarters were located. He came home every night at eight o’clock for dinner. The two British officers, dressed in German uniforms, stopped the car on its way home to Knossos; the Cretan partisans overpowered the chauffeur and the general. The two officers then drove the car through the German roadblocks in Heraklion (the general silent with a knife at his throat) and left the car on the coast road to Rethymo. They then hiked through the mountains to the south coast, made rendezvous with a British submarine, and took General Kreipe to Alexandria and on to Middle East Headquarters in Cairo.

Here, in Notopoulos’s summary, is the heroic song the bard produced:

“An order comes from British and American headquarters in Cairo to capture General Kreipe, dead or alive; the motive is revenge for his cruelty to the Cretans. A Cretan partisan, Lefteris Tambakis (not one of the actual guerrilla band) appears before the English general (Fermor and Moss are combined into one and elevated in rank) and volunteers for the dangerous mission. The general reads the order and the hero accepts the mission for the honor of Cretan arms. The hero goes to Heraklion, where he hears that a beautiful Cretan girl is the secretary of General Kreipe.

“In disguise the partisan proceeds to her house and in her absence reads the [English] general’s order to her mother. When the girl returns he again reads the general’s order. Telling her the honor of Crete depends on her, he catalogues the German cruelties. If she would help in the mission, her name would become immortal in Cretan history. The girl consents and asks for three days time in which to perform her role. To achieve Cretan honor she sacrifices her woman’s honor with General Kreipe in the role of a spy. She gives the hero General Kreipe’s plans for the next day.

“Our hero then goes to Knossos to meet the guerrillas and the English general. ‘Yiassou general,’ he says. ‘I will perform the mission.’ The guerrillas go to Arkhanes to get a long car with which to blockade the road. Our hero, mounted on a horse by the side of the blockading car, awaits the car of Kaiseri (that is what the bard calls Kreipe). The English general orders the pistols to be ready. When Kreipe’s car slows down at the turn he is attacked by the guerrillas. Kreipe is stripped of his uniform (only his cap in the actual event) and begs for mercy for the sake of his children (a stock motif in Cretan poetry).

“After the capture the frantic Germans begin to hunt with dogs (airplanes in the actual event). The guerrillas start on the trek to Mount Ida and by stages the party reaches the district of Sfakia (the home of the singer and his audience; actually the general left the island southwest of Mount Ida). The guards have to protect the general from the mob of enraged Sfakians. Soon the British submarine arrives and takes the general to Egypt. Our bard concludes the poem with a traditional epilogue—that never before in the history of the world has such a deed been done. He then gives his name, his village, his service to his country.”

So much for epic history. Nine years after the event the British protagonists have been reduced to one nameless general whose part in the operation is secondary and there can hardly be any doubt that if the song is still sung now the British element in the proceedings is practically nonexistent—if indeed it managed to survive at all through the years in which Britain, fighting to retain its hold on Cyprus, became the target of bitter hostility in Greece and especially among the excitable Cretans.

It took the Cretan oral tradition only nine years to promote to the leadership of the heroic enterprise a purely fictitious character of a different nationality. This is a sobering thought when one reflects that there is nothing to connect Agamemnon, Achilles, Priam, and Hector with the fire-blackened layer of thirteenth-century ruins known as Troy VII A (the archaeologists’ candidate for Homer’s city) except a heroic poem which cannot have been fixed in its present form by writing until the late eighth century, at least four illiterate centuries after the destruction.

To read the full article click here.

Charles Moore on Paddy

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‘The intellect of man,’ Yeats famously wrote, ‘is forced to choose between perfection of the life, or of the work.’ Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has just died aged 96, managed to refuse this choice and achieve both.

He was what is now called a role model — a war hero, an intrepid traveller, a witty guest, a man with whom women fell in love, a Byronic romantic without Byron’s unkindness — but he was also a writer with the most exacting standards and unique imagination. His highly wrought prose was not affected: it expressed his delight in and minute attention to life and art, places and people — the stranger the better; and it inspired that delight in others.

All the letters I have from him overflow with enthusiasms. There is a silly idea for a cartoon he has sketched out in which a spherical man and a thin one with a hawk on his wrist stand outside a castle gate, staring disconsolately at a castle gate on which is pinned the notice ‘No Hawkers, No Circulars’. There is a poem called Message to Skopje:

Your claim to the name “Macedonia”

Could scarcely be flimsier or phonier

If you want an old name

For your state, what a shame

Not to bring back the real one, Paeonia.

He writes about ‘marvellous girls in tricornes’ hunting in France, and to recommend (he was always generous in advancing the careers of others) a self-taught village boy who has translated the whole of Homer into ‘wonderful Cretan rhyming couplets, taking just about the same time over it as Pope in his villa at Twickenham’.

Paddy was the best companion. Once, when he was already well into his seventies, we had him to dinner in London. As he was reciting a comic poem, his chair leg snapped. we were horrified that our furniture might have done for him, but Paddy managed an athletic parachute roll and ended up in the corner of the room with his back against the wall, laughing like a boy.

From the Spectator

Hunting Hitler’s Henchmen on National Geographic tonight at 7.00 pm

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This programme showing tonight covers the story of Paddy and Moss and the brave Cretans who captured General Kreipe. However, it comes with an ‘accuracy warning’. It appears that the makers approached Tim Todd and fellow experts but in the end Tim did not work with them as it appeared that the makers wished to stray from some of the facts. However, for those who know little enough about this, it may be no worse than the Powell-Pressburger movie. I have no idea if 7.00 pm means UK time or some other GMT + or – time.

You can find out more on the National Geographic website. The blurb describes it as follows:

Their bravery has inspired countless films but, until now, the real story of some of Britain’s greatest war heroes has remained in the shadows.

Hunting Hitler’s Henchmen is a film about some of Britain’s bravest military. With ex-special forces soldiers as guides, venture beyond the movies to meet the snatch squads: commandos sent behind enemy lines to take out Hitler’s most-feared generals.

They slipped into Nazi-led Libya to kill the infamous Desert Fox, General Erwin Rommel, and succeeded in snatching General Heinrich Kreipe from under the noses of 15,000 soldiers.

Risking their lives to disrupt the Nazi war machine, these are the heroes who inspired Hollywood: incredible men sent to eliminate Hitler’s top brass.

A sign from the gods

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John Craxton was the first choice illustrator for many of Paddy’s books. An exceptionally talented artist, he died in 2009 aged 87 years. You can read his obituary here.

In this article from the Spectator first published in 2004, Andrew Lambirth talks to John Craxton about the recreation of his designs for Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe choreographed by Frederick Ashton.

John Craxton (born 1922) is a painter who has spent much of his life in Greece. Growing up in an intensely musical family in Hampstead (his father was the first pianist to play Debussy in England, his sister was a celebrated oboist), he was aware from a very early age of the infinite and magical connections between sound and the visual image. His subsequent work as a painter has all the structure one expects of a great composer: his are paintings which sing of their substance.

Elisha Willis as Chloë and Iain Mackay as Daphnis; photo: Bill Cooper

Craxton first went to Greece in 1946, staying on Poros, an island renowned for its ravishing charm (Lawrence Durrell called it ‘the happiest place I have ever known’). In 1951, Craxton shared digs with Patrick Leigh Fermor. Apparently, Leigh Fermor’s preferred regimen was to taverna-crawl by day and write by night. Craxton, ever the sociable, found painting by night difficult because of the lack of proper lighting. A big picture was on the go, but progress was somewhat hesitant. Then came a telegram from England.

Craxton already knew Frederick Ashton slightly, so the suggestion that he design a ballet for him was not completely unlikely, though it was unexpected. Suddenly the artist had to decide: stay in Greece and work on his picture, or up sticks and go back to London. The seductive Mediterranean or the ration books of old England? Uncertain what to do, Craxton went to see an old friend who happened to be ill in bed at the time, fiddled with his radio and tuned in to — Ravel. It was Daphnis and Chloe, the very music of Ashton’s ballet.

A sign like that (no doubt from the gods themselves) cannot be ignored. Craxton returned to London, and in a very few months designed the decor for Ashton’s ballet. Craxton made only one stipulation, that the costumes be modern dress, not ancient Greek, an idea that Ashton was open to. That was in 1951. The principal dancers were Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes. Daphnis and Chloe was a notable success, and it has remained in the Covent Garden repertoire ever since, revived from time to time with new input from Craxton. Now it is being staged again. The main problem for the designer was that nearly all his designs, sets and costumes had been done away with, in one of those senseless purges which from time to time disfigure great institutions.

Only two costumes survived this petty holocaust — the ones which Margot Fonteyn had herself given to the Opera House’s archive. Nor were there drawings from which the originals might be recreated, for many of them had come about through the combined efforts of Craxton, Ashton and Fonteyn. Time was short, and the three not only shared a common artistic aim, but also understood how the project might be realised. Costumes could even be improvised from a bolt of cloth, if necessary. For that original production, Craxton painted all the scenery by hand himself. To recreate it in 2004, he had to rely on his memory, a few photographs and the album cover of a Decca long-playing record of the ballet. Rather amazingly, Craxton has triumphantly summoned forth once more his enchanted island setting, with cave-mouth, vine pergola, barren rocks and fig and olive trees. I visited him at the Royal Opera House production workshops in Bow Industrial Park in east London. There he was putting the finishing touches to some olive trees, which he was painting on their sides.

He recalled his original task, more than half a century ago. ‘I was very lucky at that time in Clement Glock, the woman who ran the paint department, who was a very good scene-painter, and rather a sophisticated person altogether. She had worked with Sutherland, Piper and Derain and people like that. Her idea was to get the painter to do his own scenery as much as possible, so that it actually looked as if he’d painted it rather than it being an imitation of his style. So that’s what I did, working with enormous brushes on 60-ft lengths in the paint room at Covent Garden.’ (The paint frame by which vast flats can be readily manipulated was done away with in the recent ROH makeover.)

Craxton explains the ballet’s plot, which features pirates, a near-rape and the intervention of Pan. ‘There are two stories really — the original story by Longus (about 2nd- or 3rd-century AD) which the ballet is based on, and the version that Diaghilev and Ravel came up with in 1912. The whole thing is very Arcadian — like a Pompeian Barbara Cartland novel. It’s really a pastoral romance in which two young people, a girl and boy, awaken to sexual desire and fall in love.’ Craxton used a late Greek story to convey what he knew about contemporary Greece. He enjoyed the challenge of it. ‘What I wanted to avoid was a lack of unity between the decor and the dancers. I wanted them to be the same scale, which was much easier to achieve if I was painting the scenery myself and not having my drawings blown up by others.’

This was Craxton’s first ballet, but the painting of scenery was relatively straightforward for an easel painter. He was, however, a novice costume designer, having no idea how to make a dress, and to begin with he was forced to rely on the wardrobe department. Requesting an absolutely classical lady’s dress, he was presented with a 1938 short cocktail dress, as he describes it, ‘off the shoulder, pleated — dreadful. I went to see what had been done with Margot and Freddie and I was practically in tears. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. Margot was brilliantly clever and sensed the terrible state I was in with worry and disappointment and said, “I don’t think this is really what John wants at all.” So she got the material together and started to bunch it up and designed a costume with a tight bodice and loose skirt. Only Margot could have done that. We found a material called stockingette, which hung very well and dyed very well.

‘What I tried to do was make a group of harmonic colours for the shepherdesses, so the colours relate together like a chord, leaving me freedom to have the temptress in Schiaparelli pink, and Chloe in yellow. When I first did the costumes I put Chloe in yellow, but because the lighting was so primitive then, her dress came out rather beige. There was a girl in the row of shepherdesses who was dressed in pink. Her dress shone out so brightly that Margot said, “I’m having that dress.” But for this new production I’ve put Chloe in yellow as I wanted from the beginning. A simple naive girl wouldn’t be wearing pink, but primrose yellow.’

The current decor is almost identical to the original production, though slightly more complicated. ‘In 1951, the decor was very much simpler. It had one big backcloth in the first scene, and the tails, which are those flats on either side of the stage, were just plain blue material. There was no time to do anything to them. It was all an incredible rush, but that’s showbiz. It was only for a later production that Freddie said, “What about making some tails with rocks and trees,” and that’s roughly what you see today.’

Now the rocks in scene two have been redesigned and painted porphyry red to make them more menacing, and there’s a new drop curtain. The pirates are all dressed in black as Cretans. The ballet really looks like one of Craxton’s own paintings come to life — ‘It was the only honest way I could do it. I couldn’t have done a pastiche of ancient Greece — it’s not me. It was one of the first Mediterranean ballets, based on my own experiences in Poros and Crete.’ For this reason, Craxton’s sets have an authenticity which is as compelling as it is beguiling.

Related article:

Paddy’s Illustrator – John Craxton Telegraph Obituary