Sir Patrick "Paddy" Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II died he was , 96.. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer",[2] with books including his classic A Time of Gifts (1977). A BBC journalist once described him as "a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene."
(11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011)
Early life and education
He was born in London, the son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (née Ambler). Shortly after his birth, his mother and sister left to join his father in India, leaving the infant in England with a family in Northamptonshire and he did not meet his family until he was four. As a child, Leigh Fermor had problems with academic structure and limitations. As a result, he was sent to a school for "difficult children". He was later expelled from The King's School, Canterbury, when he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter. His last report from The King's School noted that the young Fermor was "a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness."[4] He continued learning by reading texts on Greek, Latin, Shakespeare and History, with the intention of entering the Royal Military College Sandhurst.Early travels
At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople.[5] He set off on 8 December 1933, shortly 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 a monastery 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. Written decades later, they benefit from his scholarly learning, and give a wealth of historical, geographical, linguistic and anthropological information as the narrative proceeds.Leigh Fermor arrived in Constantinople on 1 January 1935, then continued to travel around Greece. In March, he was involved in the campaign of royalist forces in Macedonia against an attempted Republican revolt. In Athens, he met Balasha Cantacuzène (Bălaşa Cantacuzino), a Romanian noblewoman, with whom he fell in love. They shared an old watermill outside the city looking out towards Poros, where she painted and he wrote. They moved on to Băleni, the Cantacuzène house in Moldavia, where they were living at the outbreak of World War II.[1]
World War II
Leigh Fermor joined the Irish Guards, but due to his knowledge of modern Greek, he was commissioned in the General List 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 German occupation. Disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michalis or Filedem, he lived for over two years in the mountains. With Captain Bill Stanley Moss MC as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German Commander, General Heinrich Kreipe.[6] The Cretans commemorate Kreipe's abduction near Archanes.[7]
Moss featured the events in his book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe (1950).[4] It was later adapted as a film by the same name, directed/produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and released in 1957. In the film, Leigh Fermor was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde.[1]
Wartime honours and legacy
- The National Archives in London holds copies of Leigh Fermor's wartime dispatches from occupied Crete in file number HS 5/728.
Post war
In 1950, Leigh Fermor's published his first book, The Traveller's Tree, about his post-war travels in the Caribbean. The book won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and established his career path. He went on to write several further books of his journeys, including Mani and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece. Critics and discerning readers regard his 1977 A Time of Gifts as one of the greatest travel books in the English language.He translated the manuscript, The Cretan Runner, written by George Psychoundakis, the dispatch runner on Crete during the war. Leigh Fermor helped Psychoundakis get his work published. Leigh Fermor wrote a novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques. It was adapted as an opera by Malcolm Williamson.
His friend Lawrence Durrell, in Bitter Lemons (1957), recounts how, during the outbreak of Cypriot insurgency against continued British rule in 1955, Leigh Fermor visited Durrell's villa in Bellapaix, Cyprus:
"After a splendid dinner by the fire he starts singing, songs of Crete, Athens, Macedonia. When I go out to refill the ouzo bottle...I find the street completely filled with people listening in utter silence and darkness. Everyone seems struck dumb. 'What is it?' I say, catching sight of Frangos. 'Never have I heard of Englishmen singing Greek songs like this!' Their reverent amazement is touching; it is as if they want to embrace Paddy wherever he goes." [8]
Later years
Death
Patrick Leigh Fermor died on 10 June 2011, aged 96, following a long illness.[10]Awards and legacy
- 1950, Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature for The Traveller's Tree
- 1978, WH Smith Literary Award for A Time of Gifts.
- 1991, elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature [11]
- 1995, Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et Lettres[12]
- February 2004, accepted the knighthood which he had declined in 1991.[13]
- 2004, awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers.
- 2007, the Greek government made him Commander of the Order of the Phoenix.[2]
- His life and work were profiled by the travel writer Benedict Allen in the documentary series Travellers' Century (2008) on BBC Four.
- A documentary film on the Cretan resistance The 11th Day (2003) contains extensive interview segments with Leigh Fermor in which he recounted his service in the S.O.E. and his activities on Crete, including the capture of General Kreipe.
Works
Books
- The Traveller's Tree (1950)
- The Violins of Saint-Jacques (1953)
- A Time to Keep Silence (1957)
- Mani - Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958)
- Roumeli (1966)
- A Time of Gifts - On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (1977)
- Between the Woods and the Water (1986)
- Three Letters from the Andes (1991)
- Words of Mercury (2003) edited by Artemis Cooper
- Introduction to Into Colditz by Lt Colonel Miles Reid, Michael Russell Publishing Ltd, Wilton (1983). The story of Reid's captivity in Colditz and eventual escape by faking illness so as to qualify for repatriation. Reid had served with Leigh Fermor in Greece and was captured there trying to defend the Corinth Canal bridge when the Germans launched an attack with paratroops in 1941.
- Foreword of Albanian Assignment by Colonel David Smiley, Chatto & Windus, London (1984). The story of SOE in Albania, by a brother in arms of Leigh Fermor, who was later a MI6 agent.
- In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh-Fermor (2008), edited by Charlotte Mosley
Translations
- No Innocent Abroad (published in USA as Forever Ulysses) by C.P. Rodocanachi (1938)
- The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation by George Psychoundakis (1955)
Screenplay
- The Roots of Heaven (1958) adventure film, directed by John Huston
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