We have waited a long time, and now like London buses, or English summer rain, it is all coming at once. Following on from her work on Patrick Leigh Fermor’s biography, An Adventure, to be published in October 2012, Artemis Cooper will pull together Paddy’s work on Volume Three ready for publication in autumn 2013.

The book will have the title The Broken Road. If you Google that you will find a catchy country song by Rascal Flatts. In fact the title has been taken from the sixth volume of Freya Stark’s letters. I am told that everyone concerned with the publication is agreed that it “sets up the right resonances, because although The Broken Road completes the story, the text is taken from more than one unpublished source.”

It is perhaps not well-known that Paddy started to work first on the events of Vol 3. Much of it was written before his defining work on A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, the other two volumes in the trilogy.

Artemis Cooper tells me that although “it does not have their high polish, it does provide an extraordinary insight into Paddy the writer, and the interplay of his memory and imagination.” and whilst “it’s not going to sound like ATOG or BWW”, I am sure it will be one of the most anticipated publication events of next year.

Whilst we wait we can sing along ….