Patrick Leigh Fermor

on foot to Constantinople : from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

A time of gifts

"Mr. Fermor's elegant rococo fantasy about a volcanic eruption on an imaginary Caribbean island is just close enough to reality to raise a genuine shiver—possibly even a genuine tear. In truth, it is a small timeless masterpiece." —Phoebe Lou Adams, The Atlantic An NYRB Classics Original Patrick Leigh Fermor’s only novel displays the same lustrous way with words as his beloved travel trilogy (A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, and The Broken Road), the memoir of his youthful walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. This slim book starts with the meeting of an English traveler and an enigmatic elderly Frenchwoman on an Aegean island. He is captivated by her painting of a busy Caribbean port in the shadow of a volcano, which leads her to tell him the story of her childhood in that town back at the beginning of the twentieth century. The tale she unfolds, set in the tropical luxury of the island of Saint-Jacques, is one of romantic intrigue and decadence involving the descendants of slaves and a fading French aristocracy. Then, on the night of the annual Mardi Gras ball, a whole world comes to a catastrophic and haunting end.

The Violins of Saint-Jacques

Tempo de Silêncio

One of the most daring feats in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s daring life was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, on April 26, 1944. Abducting a General, now published for the first time in the United States, is Leigh Fermor’s own account of the kidnapping. Written in his inimitable prose, and introduced by the acclaimed Special Operations Executive historian Roderick Bailey, it is a glorious firsthand account of one of the great adventures of the Second World War. Also included in this book are Leigh Fermor’s intelligence reports sent from caves deep within Crete, which bring the immediacy of SOE operations vividly alive, as well as the peril under which the SOE and Resistance were operating, and a guide to the journey that Kreipe took, from the abandonment of his car to the embarkation site, so that the modern visitor to Crete can relive this extraordinary trip.

The Kreipe Operation in Crete

Abducting a General

Martha Gellhorn

Elizabeth Taylor

Laurie Lee

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Patrick Hamilton

Saki

Die schönsten Weihnachtsgeschichten von der Insel, erzählt von Saki, Laurie Lee, Martha Gellhorn, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Elizabeth Taylor, Patrick Hamilton und Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Weihnachtsgeschichten von der Insel

Merry Christmas

W. H. Auden

Evelyn Waugh

Cyril Connolly

Angus Wilson

Christopher Sykes

"This sparkling curiosity was inspired by Ian Fleming, who in 1962 had the intriguing idea of asking eminent British writers to comment on the deadly sins for the London Sunday Times. The result is a colletive display of wit, erudition, and common sense, as each author essays his or her assigned vice."--Cover.

The Seven Deadly Sins

A revelatory collection of letters written by the author of The Broken Road. Handsome, spirited and erudite, Patrick Leigh Fermor was a war hero and one of the greatest travel writers of his generation. He was also a spectacularly gifted friend. The letters in this collection span almost seventy years, the first written ten days before Paddy's twenty-fifth birthday, the last when he was ninety-four. His correspondents include Deborah Devonshire, Ann Fleming, Nancy Mitford, Lawrence Durrell, Diana Cooper and his lifelong companion, Joan Rayner; he wrote his first letter to her in his cell at the monastery Saint Wandrille, the setting for his reflections on monastic life in A Time to Keep Silence. His letters exhibit many of his most engaging characteristics: his zest for life, his unending curiosity, his lyrical descriptive powers, his love of language, his exuberance and his tendency to get into scrapes - particularly when drinking and, quite separately, driving. Here are plenty of extraordinary stories: the hunt for Byron's slippers in one of the remotest regions of Greece; an ignominious dismissal from Somerset Maugham's Villa Mauresque; hiding behind a bush to dub Dirk Bogarde into Greek during the shooting of Ill Met by Moonlight, the film based on the story of General Kreipe's abduction; his extensive travels. Some letters contain glimpses of the great and the good, while others are included purely for the joy of the jokes.

The Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor

Dashing for the Post

Recounts the author's 1933 journey down the Danube to Budapest and then across the Hungarian Plain into Transylvania

On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland : the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates

Between the Woods and the Water

The account of Patrick Leigh Fermor's trip on foot from Rotterdam to Constantinople, beginning in 1933.

Patrick Leigh Fermor

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