#blogjune 14 In tearing haste

When Patrick Leigh Fermor died last week, I went to the library catalogue to hunt out my Fermor favourites. Much to my delight I discovered a book I didn't know. Edited by Charlotte Mosley, In tearing haste is a collection of letters between Patrick Leigh Fermor and Deborah Devonshire. The correspondence which is two-sided (i.e. I mean there are letters from both of them) spans the period from 1954 to 2008. It is illustrated by a great series of photos of them and lots of other familiar bods and ends in a poignant one taken in 2008 at Edensor with both of them, backs to the camera, heading away from the viewer.

I have just been dipping into it since I brought it home but think it deserves a solid cover-to-cover read now!

#blogjune 9 Vale Patrick Leigh Fermor aged 96

What an end of an era! Paddy Leigh Fermor was well-known for his famous walk across Europe with Horace in his bag and his travel classics A time of gifts and Between the woods and the water. I wonder where my copies are and feel that I should pull them out.

Apart from that for me he was synonymous with the Mani and his eponymous book on the Mani and his Roumeli are both classic books on Greece. I didn't ever meet him but while I was in Athens in the 1970s he was certainly around at various times.

There are many obituaries and I have a couple of links here:

http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.politikh&id=283540 (in Greek)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/patrick-leigh-fermor-british-adventurer-writer-and-war-hero-dies-at-96/2011/06/10/AG5bfpQH_story.html (in English)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/special-forces-obituaries/8568395/Sir-Patrick-Leigh-Fermor.html