Bright Young Things discussion

OK, so first things first, Patrick Leigh Fermor is not a favourite BYT author. How could he be? I've yet to read anything by him.

I have come across two recommendations in the space of two days and I take this as a sign that he is well worthy of further investigation.

But where does the Patrick Leigh Fermor novice start?

Indeed, who is Patrick Leigh Fermor?

In Britain and Greece he is a near legend, celebrated not only for his books but for his wartime exploits as a guerrilla leader in occupied Crete, where his abduction of a German general has passed into folklore.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

Early travels

At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He set off on 8 December 1933, less than a year after Hitler had come to power in Germany, with a few clothes, several letters of introduction, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace's Odes. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but also was invited by landed gentry and aristocracy into the country houses of Central Europe. He experienced hospitality in many monasteries along the way. Two of his later travel books, A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), were about this journey. A book on the final part of his journey was unfinished at the time of Leigh Fermor's death, but was published as The Broken Road: Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos in September 2013 by John Murray. The book draws on Leigh Fermor's diary at the time and on an early draft he wrote in the 1960s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_...

Second World War

As an officer cadet, Leigh Fermor trained alongside Derek Bond and Iain Moncreiffe, and later joined the Irish Guards. Due to his knowledge ofmodern Greek, he was commissioned in the General List in August 1940 and became a liaison officer in Albania. He fought in Crete and mainland Greece. During the German occupation, he returned to Crete three times, once by parachute. He was one of a small number of Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers posted to organise the island's resistance to the occupation. Disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michalis or Filedem, he lived for over two years in the mountains. With Captain Bill Stanley Mossas his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander, General Heinrich Kreipe. There is a memorial commemorating Kreipe's abduction near Archanes in Crete.

Moss featured the events of the Cretan capture in his book Ill Met by Moonlight (1950). It was later adapted in a film by the same name. It was directed/produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and released in 1957. In the film, Leigh Fermor was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_...


Ally, in the New Discoveries thread, mentioned a biography ...



Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

...Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, 'A Time of Gifts' and 'Between the Woods and the Water'; he was a self-educated polymath, a lover of Greece and the best company in the world.

Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Paddy and his closest friends as well as having complete access to his archives. Her beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts - no one wore their learning so playfully, nor inspired such passionate friendship.

GoodReads friend Cheryl (who is well worth following/befriending) has written a typically inspiring and helpful review of A Time of Gifts here...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

So what is the BYT verdict on Patrick Leigh Fermor?

Where does the Patrick Leigh Fermor novice start?

How good is Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper?

In terms of the last question...

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Patrick Leigh Fermor's legendary life is that it lasted as long as it did. He died in 2011 at the age of 96, having survived enough assaults on his existence to make Rasputin seem like a quitter. He was car-bombed by communists in Greece, knifed in Bulgaria, and pursued by thousands of Wehrmacht troops across Crete after kidnapping the commander of German forces on the island. Malaria, cancer and traffic accidents failed to claim him.

He was the target of a long-standing Cretan blood vendetta, which did not deter him from returning to the island, though assassins waited with rifles and binoculars outside the villages he visited. He was beaten into a bloody mess by a gang of pink-coated Irish huntsmen after he asked if they buggered their foxes. He smoked 80 cigarettes a day for 30 years, and often set his bed-clothes ablaze after falling asleep with a lit fag in hand. He drank epically, and would "drown hangovers like kittens" in breakfast pints of beer and vodka. As a young SOE agent in Cairo in 1943, the centrepiece of his Christmas lunch was a turkey stuffed with Benzedrine pills; at the age of 69 he swam the Hellespont – and was nearly swept away by the current.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012...

The figure who emerges from this outstanding biography is, though, more glorious for the faint tarnish he acquires in its course. His passion for life emerges as a moral force, invigorating and inspiring those around him. His gifts were profuse, and he gave of them without expectation of recompense. What he discovered was that such benevolence prompts the finest forms of reward: love, friendship and loyalty.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012...

It feels like the start of another beautiful relationship.

I have read only A Time of Giftsand Between the Woods and the Water. I did find them both excellent, really vivid. I haven't read Artemis Cooper's biography but suspect I should. I think he's worth a try.

^ Thanks Mike. That sounds very promising.


As does this paragraph from William Blacker...

It was not just the books of Patrick Leigh Fermor – notably Between the Woods and the Water – that inspired me, but also the man. He was the quintessential free spirit. He didn't bother with university, but at the age of 18 set off, on foot, across Europe, hoping for the best. His journey lasted five years and led to extraordinary wartime adventures and a series of breathtaking books, which are among the masterpieces of 20th-century literature. The success he made of his brand of non-conformity should fill all would-be wanderers with hope. Read about his life, read his books, and if you are not similarly inspired and exhilarated then, as Kim said, "Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe."

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/201...

Just stumbled across




Drink Time!: In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Memoir by Dolores Payis Amanda Hopkinson

In 2009, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Spanish-language translator, Dolores Payás, visited her subject for the first time in his house in Greece. Out of this first encounter came a friendship that lasted until the writer’s death two years later. This charming account was born of those hours spent in his company, a highly personal and moving depiction of the legendary adventurer and man of letters during his final years, surrounded by his drinks, his guests and, above all, his books.

No reviews on GoodReads yet but three 5 star reviews on Amazon....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/190965762...
As I type it's £3 on Kindle in the UK. I'm going to grab a copy.

More info here...

http://new.bene-factum.co.uk/product/...

There's quite a bit of PLF related work out there - and it all looks very compelling. I'm getting deeper and deeper in with PLF.

This is a tremendous 25 minute documentary about Patrick Leigh Fermor and the Cretan partisans who abducted General Heinrich Kreipe during World War 2.

A story of courage that inspired the film "Ill met by moonlight".

Nico Mastorakis narrates his own production which brought Kreipe and his old enemies together before the cameras.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN1qr...

By the by, there are two recent books/reissues about Paddy's war exploits, specifically the celebrated kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete...

Abducting a General: Crete in the War

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/14...

Kidnap in Crete: The True Story of the Abduction of a Nazi General

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/14...

And here's a great article all about it, that first appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 7 September 2014 and is reprinted on the splendid PMF blog (http://patrickleighfermor.wordpress.com)...

http://patrickleighfermor.wordpress.c...

The Patrick Leigh Fermor Appreciation Society

I've started "The Patrick Leigh Fermor Appreciation Society" having just read A Time of Gifts and about a quarter of Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper.

I am already in thrall to Patrick Leigh Fermor.

There seems to be so much to admire about the man: enthusiastic, tolerant, charming, open minded, heroic, passionate, erudite, educated and a great writer. I am sure he had his less attractive qualities however, so far, I am captivated by his many positive characteristics. Whilst I know very little about him, I am already set upon reading all his books and others associated with him and his era and exploits.

If you feel the same, or think you might, then please come and get involved.

Click here for "The Patrick Leigh Fermor Appreciation Society"

This article was published in the Weekly Standard on 29 September 2014 by Dominic Green...


A Place in the Sun: The very slow progress toward a permanent retreat

I think this is as good a summation of Paddy's strengths as a writer as any I have come across so far...

Leigh Fermor’s writing, like his biography, is one of the last monuments of the imperial age, when the British were not merely worldly, but global. His tone is a late outcrop of Bloomsbury—delicate, languid, melodious, precise—but purged of provinciality. His clauses flow with a French rhythm, the décadence of Second Empire Paris, and are studded with a cosmopolitan glitter of linguistic borrowings and historical speculations. Leigh Fermor was a travel writer in the sense that Pepys was a diarist. Every turn of his road evokes reflections on history, art, religion, and language. Investigations of folk songs, dances, and cheeses lead to anecdotal hunts for a pair of slippers that might once have shod Lord Byron, or a fisherman who might be the lineal descendant of the last emperor of Byzantium.

Always the language rises to the occasion, be it scenic, romantic, antiquarian, or philological. Always the present is excavated to reveal the fragments of memory. No philhellene has written better on Greece than Leigh Fermor in Mani (1980) and Roumeli (1973). Few have eulogized lost youth and interwar Europe more elegantly than Leigh Fermor in A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), the record of his walk, aged 18, from the Hook of Holland to the Iron Gates of the Danube. A posthumous and incomplete third volume, The Broken Road (2014), carries the narrative into Greece through shepherds’ huts, urban mansions, and fishermen’s caves.

Click here to read the whole article - which is about Paddy's house in Greece

I was just looking at new book releases on Amazon, and was slightly startled to see that there's a new book by Patrick Leigh Fermor out next week! It's Abducting a General: Crete in the War



It's due for publication in both the UK and the US on October 9.

Here is the Goodreads blurb:

One of the greatest feats in Patrick Leigh Fermor's remarkable life was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, on 26 April 1944. He and Captain Billy Moss hatched a daring plan to abduct the general, while ensuring that no reprisals were taken against the Cretan population. Dressed as German military police, they stopped and took control of Kreipe's car, drove through twenty-two German checkpoints, then succeeded in hiding from the German army before finally being picked up on a beach in the south of the island and transported to safety in Egypt on 14 May.

'Abducting a General' is Leigh Fermor's own account of the kidnap, published for the first time. Written in his inimitable prose, and introduced by acclaimed SOE historian Professor Roderick Bailey, it is a glorious first-hand 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 yet still retaining his remarkable prose skills, which bring the immediacy of SOE operations vividly alive, as well as the peril which the SOE and Resistance were operating under; and a guide to the journey that Kreipe was taken on from the abandonment of his car to the embarkation site so that the modern visitor can relive this extraordinary event.

I'm wondering why this has never been published before! It's his second major posthumous publication, after The Broken Road: Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos

^ Exciting times eh?


Having read Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper, I would guess that Paddy's perfectionism meant he wasn't convinced it was ready for publication. Since his death his publisher, John Murray, can make those decisions for him. Just a guess.

Here's more info from John Murray....
https://www.hodder.co.uk/books/detail...

Exciting indeed, Nigeyb. I should think you must be right - that TV programme gave the impression that he was rewriting 'The Broken Road' endlessly, so maybe the same was the case with this one!

Here's a review of Abducting a General from the Spectator by Justin Marozzi on 4 October 2014...


More derring dos and don’ts from Paddy Leigh Fermor
A review of Abducting a General, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Kidnap in Crete, by Rick Stroud. An exhilarating account of Paddy’s hair-raising kidnapping of a Nazi general that was ultimately of dubious strategic value

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9328...

Recent years have seen the slim but splendid Patrick Leigh Fermor oeuvre swell considerably. In 2008 came In Tearing Haste, an entertaining collection of letters to and from Deborah Devonshire, followed last year by The Broken Road, the posthumously sparkling and long-awaited completion of the ‘Great Trudge’ trilogy, which finally delivered the 18-year-old Paddy from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Now comes another volume, setting out in full for the first time one of the great moments in a life heavily laced with glamour and incident.

It takes some chutzpah to kidnap a German general — and serious presence of mind to get away with it. Paddy, the Special Operations Executive commander of a group of 11 Cretan andartes, or guerrilla fighters, together with his second-in-command Captain William Stanley Moss, had excessive stores of both. At 9.30 p.m. on the night of 26 April 1944, the Anglo-Cretan desperadoes intercepted the car carrying General Heinrich Kreipe, commander of the 22nd Luftlande Division.

Paddy then impersonated the general as the Moss-chauffeured car drove on through 22 German checkpoints, the hair-raising prelude to an 18-day Nazi manhunt described in exhilarating detail in both of these books. The moment one morning when the Englishman overheard the captured general reciting an ode by Horace is already famous. The autodidact and show-off couldn’t help jumping in and finishing the stanza:

The general’s blue eyes swivelled away from the mountain-top to mine, and when I’d finished, after a long silence, he said: ‘Ach so, Herr Major!’ It was very strange. ‘Ja, Herr General.’ As though, for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.

After many terrifying moments, some shattering climbs and descents and no shortage of near misses, Kreipe was finally spirited away onto a British ship headed for Cairo and the swashbuckling operation was over.

If the immediate success of the kidnapping is in no doubt, what of the much more vexed question which haunted its mastermind for years: was it worth it? The point of it all had been to inflict a major blow on enemy morale. Extensive steps were taken to ensure there were no Cretan reprisals by making it appear an exclusively British mission — but to no avail. The Germans, 75,000 strong on Crete, already had a viciously enforced policy of reprisals on the island, taking 50 Cretan livesfor every one of their own soldiers killed. General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, Kreipe’s predecessor and the original target of the operation, was nicknamed ‘The Butcher of Crete’ after committing a number of such atrocities.

With Kreipe kidnapped, Müller was sent back to Crete pour décourager les autres and on 13 August gave the order to raze the village of Anogia, long a centre of resistance. In a characteristically methodical operation that lasted from 13 August to 5 September, 117 people were killed and 940 houses destroyed, together with vineyards, cheese mills, wine presses and olive groves. Other villages in the Amari valley received the same treatment, with hundreds more civilians slaughtered.

Roderick Bailey, the SOE historian who has written the introduction to Paddy’s account, argues that the kidnapping operation had ‘no strategic or tactical value’. A senior British staff officer in Cairo had opposed it from the start, arguing that ‘the only contribution to the war effort would be a fillip to Cretan morale, but … the price would certainly be heavy in Cretan lives’. Kreipe himself called it a Husarestück, a Hussar stunt. More recently, Kimonas Zografakis, who sheltered the kidnappers, described Paddy as ‘neither a great Philhellene nor a new Lord Byron… he was a classic agent who served the interests of Britain’, causing ‘terrible suffering’. This last comment looks unduly harsh and certainly does not square with the lifelong friendships Paddy forged with his Cretan brothers-in-arms, nor with the deep affection most Greeks had for him.

Abducting a General, unlike Stanley Moss’s Ill Met by Moonlight, is the work of a mature man, anxious to pay proper tribute to the Cretans who were the backbone of the resistance and ran by far the greatest risks. His SOE reports, which run to 90 pages here, provide gripping cinematic portraits of Leigh Fermor the soldier.

Warrior, writer, lady-killer, Paddy was also a boulevardier who loved his threads. Page three finds him rhapsodising about his Cretan mountain shepherd disguise:

Breeches, high black boots, a twisted mulberry silk sash with an ivory-hilted dagger in a long silver scabbard, black shirt, blue embroidered waistcoat and tight black-fringed turban…

and that’s without mentioning the flamboyant moustache, homespun goat’s hair cloak, stick, bandolier and gun. Enough to frighten any Nazi general.

I've set up a discussion thread here for anyone that wants to read and discuss it....

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

On the BBC News website today is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29...

^ Brilliant. Thanks Val. Off to make a cup of tea before settling down to read that piece.


#mighthaveabiscuittoo

And there was a discussion on yesterday's Today programme on BBC Radio Four...


Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor was one of the world’s great travel writers. In the grand old tradition he was a scholar and a war hero and a general all-round high achiever. Top of his achievements was the capture of a German general on Crete – and today for the first time his account of that capture is published. Travel Writer and historian William Dalrymple and biographer Artemis Cooper discuss.

If you can get BBC iPlayer in your country then click here...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04kf7ff

The PLF bit starts at 2:23

The Today programme has just had another bit about Patrick Leigh Fermor - it's an interview with Adam Sisman, who has edited a new collection of PLF's letters.

This will be available on iPlayer for another 5 days - this is link to just the relevant clip:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04g07s8

Thanks Judy. I'll check it out tomorrow.

Thanks Judy - hopefully I've still got another couple of days to check it out.