Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
John Murray (2013), Edition: 1st Edition, 464 pages
Description
"Patrick Leigh Fermor's enviably colorful life took off when in 1934, at the age of eighteen, he decided to walk across Europe. In just over a year he had trekked through nine countries and taught himself three languages, and his enthusiasm and curiosity for every kind of experience made him equally happy in caves or country houses, among shepherds or countesses. At the outbreak of war he left his lover, Princess Balasha Cantacuzene, in Romania and returned to England to enlist. Commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, he became one of the handful of Allied officers supporting the Cretan resistance to the German occupation. In 1944 he commanded the Anglo-Cretan team that abducted General Heinrich Kreipe and spirited him away to Egypt. A journey to the Caribbean, stays in monasteries, and explorations all over Greece provided the subjects for his first books. It was not until he and his wife had moved to southern Greece that he returned to his earliest walk. In these books, which took many years to write, he created a vision of a prewar Europe, which in its beauty and abundance has never been equaled. Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Leigh Fermor and his closest friends, and has had complete access to his archive. Her beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts--no one wore their learning so playfully nor inspired such passionate friendship"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Steve38
An authorised and friendly biography of writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. Ms Cooper had access to all the documents and contacts she needed and has produced a good, steady affectionate document of his life. And a far from boring life it was. As well as telling us about subject of the book Ms Cooper also
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manages to bring to life the lost world of Britain and Europe in the 1930s and 1950s as seen through the eyes and experiences of socialites and minor aristocrats. There is the occasional hint of criticism but it's obvious that Ms Cooper liked her subject. She has produced not a hagiography but certainly an biography strong on admiration. Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
No surprise that this is a very sympathetic account of Paddy Leigh Fermor's life: Artemis Cooper is not only the granddaughter of one of his dearest friends, but also the person chosen to edit his unpublished manuscripts. Her realisation of the famously-unwritten "Volume III" of the
One thing that reading this biography really brings home is how little published work PLF actually did produce during his very long writing career. There have been other writers who produced fewer books in a shorter time, of course, but not many can match his record of 7 books in 70 years as a full-time writer. You do sometimes wonder how one can manage to have such an agreeable lifestyle with so little work. Plenty of rich friends and a generous partner, I suppose. But that's petty jealousy: we should be glad that PLF was able to keep open house in England and Greece entertaining and mentoring half the young writers (and probably three-quarters of the upper classes) of both countries. I'm sure no-one was the worse for it.
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Hoek-of-Holland-to-Constantinople walk is due to be published in 2013. But I don't think that will be a problem for most readers. PLF seems to have been one of those people who is remembered affectionately by practically everyone who ever met him, whilst readers of his books also very often mention him as an author that they would have loved to meet face to face. One thing that reading this biography really brings home is how little published work PLF actually did produce during his very long writing career. There have been other writers who produced fewer books in a shorter time, of course, but not many can match his record of 7 books in 70 years as a full-time writer. You do sometimes wonder how one can manage to have such an agreeable lifestyle with so little work. Plenty of rich friends and a generous partner, I suppose. But that's petty jealousy: we should be glad that PLF was able to keep open house in England and Greece entertaining and mentoring half the young writers (and probably three-quarters of the upper classes) of both countries. I'm sure no-one was the worse for it.
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LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
I do love biographies but I was disappointed by Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure. The part where he is walking across Europe as an 18 year old is fascinating but by the time we got to his participation in World War II the author lost me. Having said that I will say this book was well received
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critically. It just wasn't for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member devenish
A fascinating book about a fascinating character. Tells of Leigh Fermor's travels and his exploits in Crete during the War. Artemis Cooper is obviously extremely fond of this complex individual and furthermore makes her reader's feel the same.
I really cannot praise this book enough.
I really cannot praise this book enough.
LibraryThing member Hiensch
This book was a bit of a disappointment for me: not the pleasant or easy summer read I expected. It is not very easily readable for someone who is not British, but -more importantly- the self-centered and not very sympathetic character of Patrick Fermor did put me somewhat off. In Dutch we have a
But his great erudition, his travel, his war-time experiences make Fermor an interesting character and I look forward reading his books on Greece.
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word for this kind of behaviour: “klaploper” that roughly translates as freeloader. I tend to agree with the judgement of Somerset Maugham: “that middle-class gigolo for upper-class women” (page 298).But his great erudition, his travel, his war-time experiences make Fermor an interesting character and I look forward reading his books on Greece.
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LibraryThing member louis69
This is a model book with maps, an index, sources and footnotes all of which contribute to a really interesting and compelling biography. The fact that it is well-written makes it easy to read in spite of the complexity of Leigh Fermor's life and travels.
Did I like Patrick Leigh Fermor at the end
Did I like Patrick Leigh Fermor at the end
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of the book? Overall yes. Show Less
LibraryThing member johnwbeha
I loved "A Time of Gifts"and "A Time to Keep Silence" and really wanted to like this book, but was disappointed in both the book and the subject. The book is not well written, far too many lists of people, far too much detail to be enjoyable. As for the subject, well, apart from his war service and
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the books, there is nothing to endear him to me; an over privileged sponge, who for much of his life served no useful purpose! Show Less
LibraryThing member sainsborough
This is my kind of book - I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The thought of flitting Peter Pan-like from one serendipitous locale to the next takes me back to my own first travels in Europe as a student.
However, the sub-editor in me picked up a number of issues in the text that could have been
The author could have inserted the date a little more often. Not everyone has the luxury of reading a book in one go, and it is easy to lose track of the timeline.
There are a few poorly constructed sentences and paragraphs, and baffling non-sequiturs (for example, page 286 top).
On page 363, if you are dropping into the new section after taking a break from reading, whose 'idyllic infancy' is she talking about? Well, Paddy's, obviously, but that relies on the reader's powers of deduction rather than tidy narrative.
One can't help getting the feeling that the book is slightly incestuous because of the author being related to one of Paddy's friends (Diana Cooper).
However, the sub-editor in me picked up a number of issues in the text that could have been
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improved upon:The author could have inserted the date a little more often. Not everyone has the luxury of reading a book in one go, and it is easy to lose track of the timeline.
There are a few poorly constructed sentences and paragraphs, and baffling non-sequiturs (for example, page 286 top).
On page 363, if you are dropping into the new section after taking a break from reading, whose 'idyllic infancy' is she talking about? Well, Paddy's, obviously, but that relies on the reader's powers of deduction rather than tidy narrative.
One can't help getting the feeling that the book is slightly incestuous because of the author being related to one of Paddy's friends (Diana Cooper).
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LibraryThing member PDCRead
Until I heard this book on Radio 4's Book of the Week, their non fiction book slot, I had never heard of Patrick Leigh Fermor.
Cooper has written a comprehensive and sensitive biography about Fermor. He was a very talented writer, most famous for a travel books, and in particular for one on a walk
He bristled against authority, and through contacts managed to get a position at Sandhurst in the guards. Illness meant that he couldn't continue and was sought and signed up for intelligence corp and departed to his beloved Greece. He had what was sometimes known as a good war, and is also well know for the abduction of a German general.
He took many lovers through his life, but he met a lady called Joan Rayner at the very end of the war in Cairo. She was to become a lover at fist, dazzled by his adventures and wartime records, she eventually became the woman that became his lifelong companion; they married in 1968.
Even though he had travelled and written extensively about other countries his first love was Greece. With Joan's inheritance they bought and renovated a place in Kardamyli, and it became their refuge. Tragically Joan died after a fall at the property. One of the saddest part of the book is when he realises that he want to tell Joan something or write something to her and can't anymore.
Excellent biography. Really enjoyed it.
Cooper has written a comprehensive and sensitive biography about Fermor. He was a very talented writer, most famous for a travel books, and in particular for one on a walk
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across Europe in-between the wars. He wrote about other countries, and numerous articles. He was a very complex character, troubled in lots of ways, and carefree in others. The people he met either jelled with him straight away or would end up taking a dislike to him fairly soon after meeting him, one individual even tried to stab him. He bristled against authority, and through contacts managed to get a position at Sandhurst in the guards. Illness meant that he couldn't continue and was sought and signed up for intelligence corp and departed to his beloved Greece. He had what was sometimes known as a good war, and is also well know for the abduction of a German general.
He took many lovers through his life, but he met a lady called Joan Rayner at the very end of the war in Cairo. She was to become a lover at fist, dazzled by his adventures and wartime records, she eventually became the woman that became his lifelong companion; they married in 1968.
Even though he had travelled and written extensively about other countries his first love was Greece. With Joan's inheritance they bought and renovated a place in Kardamyli, and it became their refuge. Tragically Joan died after a fall at the property. One of the saddest part of the book is when he realises that he want to tell Joan something or write something to her and can't anymore.
Excellent biography. Really enjoyed it.
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LibraryThing member sarlis
The book and its subject matter being different things I believe that 4 stars go rather to the latter. While reading it I kept asking myself if such a life could be possible in our times. In the end my answer is "sure, why not?" and for me that is the book's main achievement.
LibraryThing member fmclellan
A lovely biography of an extraordinary man. Thoroughly enjoyed this.
Two of my favorite bits--among many--from this book. A quote from one of his friends: "Wouldn't it be lovely if Paddy came in pill-form, so you could take one whenever you felt depressed."
And this note, which Paddy wrote in a book
What a blessing to be able to write that!
Two of my favorite bits--among many--from this book. A quote from one of his friends: "Wouldn't it be lovely if Paddy came in pill-form, so you could take one whenever you felt depressed."
And this note, which Paddy wrote in a book
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he was reading when he felt his end was near: "Love to all and kindness to all friends, and thank you for a life of great happiness." What a blessing to be able to write that!
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
I first encountered Patrick Leigh Fermor when I read his account of his walk across pre-war Europe, recorded in A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and the posthumous conclusion, The Broken Road. Now I have read Artemis Cooper's biography of PLF, and I am as enamoured of the man as I
Although PLF was born into the upper middle class (father in the Indian Civil Service, mother heiress to a minor industrialist with pretentions to the stage), I was surprised to find that he had a fairly ordinary upbringing for his first four years in the Northamptonshire village of Weedon, where he was farmed out to the sister of friend of his mother while she alternated between London and India with his older sister. Indeed, I now know that I have passed the fairly ordinary house where PLF was brought up on a number of occasions.
But when he was returned to his mother's care at the age of four, he passed into a different set of surroundings, socialite London in the 1920s. His schooldays were spectacular only for his lack of achievement, but he developed for himself a love of literature, language, art and history. He conceived the idea to walk across Europe to Constantinople, a sort of itinerant scholar, foraging and fending for himself, sleeping in barns and treetops. But whilst he did a certain amount of this, he also had the benefit of letters of introduction to a few key individuals along his route, who in turn passed him on to their friends and acquaintances. In this way, he made his way through a Europe that in a few short years was to vanish.
At the outbreak of war, PLF gave up his life as the lover of a Romanian countess to return to Britain and enlist. Through a set of remarkable circumstances - well, remarkable to mere mortals such as you or I, but apparently increasingly "normal" for PLF - he ended up as an SOE operative in Crete, where he lived for four years amongst the Cretans, participating in guerrilla warfare against the occupying Germans, and ultimately achieving fame by kidnapping a German general and spiriting him away to Cairo.
After the war, PLF travelled widely, writing a number of books on Greece, a country he loved, but also other travel books and magazine articles. He continued to mix in the literary circles of Britain and Europe, and had lasting friendships with many notable writers, artists and thinkers. He died in 2011 at the age of 97.
This book is written by Artemis Cooper, grand-daughter of Duff Cooper (one of PLF's extended circle of friends) and so someone who has some direct personal knowledge of the man. At the same time, this is no hagiography: Artemis Cooper details PLF's problems with authority, his issues with applying himself to work, and the fleeting nature of many of his personal relationships. It seems that PLF was a person that you either took to immediately or thought to be way too self-centred for his own good; Cooper outlines some instances where PLF committed gaffes which estranged him from some quite influential people. At the same time, the level of personal detail Cooper puts in this book accurately reflects the man's gregariousness; if, at the beginning of A Time of Gifts, the reader is tempted to think of the 18-year old PLF boarding the ferry to the Hook of Holland to begin his walk as an innocent abroad, then the early chapters of this book will disavow you of that illusion.
The walk acts as a good framing device, as it was PLF's first major achievement, but he didn't complete his full account of the walk in his lifetime. A Time of Gifts was assembled from diaries, letters and notebooks and was published in 1977, taking him from London to Esztergom, on the Czech/Hungarian border; the second book, Between the Woods and the Water, taking him through Hungary and parts of Romania to the Iron Gates gorge on the Danube and the border with Bulgaria, did not appear until 1986. The final volume, The Broken Road, was still in progress when PLF died. It actually does not cover his arrival into Constantinople (as PLF always referred to Istanbul), and picks up some weeks later, recounting his trip to Mount Athos in Greece, a peninsula known for its remarkable isolated monasteries. It had not appeared in 2012 when this book was published; Cooper and Colin Thubron finally got the book into shape and published it in 2014.
This biography fills in many of the missing parts of PLF's story started in his account of his "Great Trudge" across Europe. Cooper hinted at some of this in the footnotes to The Broken Road, but here we see as detailed an account of PLF's life, loves and travels as one could ask for. I recommend it.
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was on reading those works.Although PLF was born into the upper middle class (father in the Indian Civil Service, mother heiress to a minor industrialist with pretentions to the stage), I was surprised to find that he had a fairly ordinary upbringing for his first four years in the Northamptonshire village of Weedon, where he was farmed out to the sister of friend of his mother while she alternated between London and India with his older sister. Indeed, I now know that I have passed the fairly ordinary house where PLF was brought up on a number of occasions.
But when he was returned to his mother's care at the age of four, he passed into a different set of surroundings, socialite London in the 1920s. His schooldays were spectacular only for his lack of achievement, but he developed for himself a love of literature, language, art and history. He conceived the idea to walk across Europe to Constantinople, a sort of itinerant scholar, foraging and fending for himself, sleeping in barns and treetops. But whilst he did a certain amount of this, he also had the benefit of letters of introduction to a few key individuals along his route, who in turn passed him on to their friends and acquaintances. In this way, he made his way through a Europe that in a few short years was to vanish.
At the outbreak of war, PLF gave up his life as the lover of a Romanian countess to return to Britain and enlist. Through a set of remarkable circumstances - well, remarkable to mere mortals such as you or I, but apparently increasingly "normal" for PLF - he ended up as an SOE operative in Crete, where he lived for four years amongst the Cretans, participating in guerrilla warfare against the occupying Germans, and ultimately achieving fame by kidnapping a German general and spiriting him away to Cairo.
After the war, PLF travelled widely, writing a number of books on Greece, a country he loved, but also other travel books and magazine articles. He continued to mix in the literary circles of Britain and Europe, and had lasting friendships with many notable writers, artists and thinkers. He died in 2011 at the age of 97.
This book is written by Artemis Cooper, grand-daughter of Duff Cooper (one of PLF's extended circle of friends) and so someone who has some direct personal knowledge of the man. At the same time, this is no hagiography: Artemis Cooper details PLF's problems with authority, his issues with applying himself to work, and the fleeting nature of many of his personal relationships. It seems that PLF was a person that you either took to immediately or thought to be way too self-centred for his own good; Cooper outlines some instances where PLF committed gaffes which estranged him from some quite influential people. At the same time, the level of personal detail Cooper puts in this book accurately reflects the man's gregariousness; if, at the beginning of A Time of Gifts, the reader is tempted to think of the 18-year old PLF boarding the ferry to the Hook of Holland to begin his walk as an innocent abroad, then the early chapters of this book will disavow you of that illusion.
The walk acts as a good framing device, as it was PLF's first major achievement, but he didn't complete his full account of the walk in his lifetime. A Time of Gifts was assembled from diaries, letters and notebooks and was published in 1977, taking him from London to Esztergom, on the Czech/Hungarian border; the second book, Between the Woods and the Water, taking him through Hungary and parts of Romania to the Iron Gates gorge on the Danube and the border with Bulgaria, did not appear until 1986. The final volume, The Broken Road, was still in progress when PLF died. It actually does not cover his arrival into Constantinople (as PLF always referred to Istanbul), and picks up some weeks later, recounting his trip to Mount Athos in Greece, a peninsula known for its remarkable isolated monasteries. It had not appeared in 2012 when this book was published; Cooper and Colin Thubron finally got the book into shape and published it in 2014.
This biography fills in many of the missing parts of PLF's story started in his account of his "Great Trudge" across Europe. Cooper hinted at some of this in the footnotes to The Broken Road, but here we see as detailed an account of PLF's life, loves and travels as one could ask for. I recommend it.
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Awards
Costa Book Awards (Shortlist — Biography — 2012)
British Book Award (Shortlist — 2012)
Waterstones Book of the Year (Shortlist — 2012)
Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year (Non-Fiction — 2013)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2012
Physical description
7.72 inches
ISBN
0719565499 / 9780719565496