Paddy Leigh Fermor was just 18 when he set forth from the Hook of Holland, bound for the Golden Horn . . .

Artemis Cooper, Paddy’s biographer, and Nick Hunt, author of Walking the Woods and the Water, join the Slightly Foxed team to explore the life and literary work of Patrick Leigh Fermor. 

Equipped with a gift for languages, a love of Byron and a rucksack full of notebooks, in December 1933 Paddy set off on foot to follow the course of the Rhine and the Danube, walking hundreds of miles. Years later he recorded much of the journey in A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. In these books Baroque architecture and noble bloodlines abound, but adventure is at the heart of his writing. There was to have been a third volume, but for years Paddy struggled with it. Only after his death were Artemis and Colin Thubron able to see The Broken Road into print. 

The trilogy inspired Nick Hunt to follow in Paddy’s footsteps. What were country lanes are now highways, and many names have changed, but Nick found places that Paddy had visited, with their echoes of times past. 

Following discussions of a love affair with a Romanian princess, Paddy’s role in the Cretan resistance in the Second World War and Caribbean volcanoes in The Violins of Saint-Jacques, we turn our focus to his books on the Greek regions of Roumeli and the Mani, and the beautiful house that Paddy and his wife Joan built in the latter, Kardamyli. And via our reading recommendations we travel from Calcutta to Kabul In a Land Far from Home, to William Trevor’s Ireland and to Cal Flynn’s Islands of Abandonment.

We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

A Great Adventure, Andy Merrills on Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts; Between the Woods and the Water, Issue 38 (4:15)

Off All the Standard Maps, Tim Mackintosh-Smith on Patrick Leigh Fermor, Roumeli, Issue 2 (46:31)

Artemis Cooper on the Leigh Fermor House, Condé Nast Traveller 

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable