Patrick Leigh Fermor

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Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor
DSO OBE
File:Patrick Leigh Fermor in 1966.jpg
Leigh Fermor in 1966
Born Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor
(1915-02-11)11 February 1915
London, England
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Dumbleton, England
Occupation Author, scholar and soldier
Nationality British
Genre Travel
Notable works A Time of Gifts, Abducting a General
Notable awards Knight Bachelor; Distinguished Service Order; Officer of the Order of the British Empire
Spouse Joan Eyres-Monsell (m. 1968; d. 2003)
Military career
Allegiance United Kingdom
Service/branch  British Army
Years of service 1940–1946
Rank Major
Battles/wars Second World War
Awards Distinguished Service Order
Officer of the Order of the British Empire

Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor DSO OBE (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011) was an English writer, scholar, soldier and polyglot.[1] He played a prominent role in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War,[2] and was widely seen as Britain's greatest living travel writer, on the basis of books such as A Time of Gifts (1977).[3] A BBC journalist once termed him "a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene".[4]

Early life and education

Leigh Fermor was born in London, the son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (Eileen), daughter of Charles Taafe Ambler.[5] Shortly after his birth, his mother and sister left to join his father in India, leaving the infant Patrick in England with a family in Northamptonshire: first in the village of Weedon, and later in nearby Dodford. He did not meet his parents or his sister again until he was four years old. As a child Leigh Fermor had problems with academic structure and limitations, and was sent to a school for "difficult" children. He was later expelled from The King's School, Canterbury after he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter.

His last report from The King's School noted that the young Leigh Fermor was "a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness".[6] He continued learning by reading texts on Greek, Latin, Shakespeare and history, with the intention of entering the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Gradually he changed his mind, deciding to become an author instead, and in the summer of 1933 relocated to Shepherd Market in London, living with a few friends. Soon, faced with the challenges of an author's life in London and rapidly draining finances, he decided to leave for Europe.[7]

Early travels

At the age of 18 Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (Istanbul).[8] He set off on 8 December 1933 with a few clothes, several letters of introduction, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a Loeb volume of Horace's Odes. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but was also invited by 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), cover this journey, but at the time of his death, a book on the final part of his journey remained unfinished. This was edited and assembled from Leigh Fermor's diary of the time and an early draft he wrote in the 1960s. It was published as The Broken Road by John Murray in September 2013.[9]

Leigh Fermor arrived in Istanbul on 1 January 1935, then continued to travel around Greece, spending a few weeks in Mount Athos. 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 Phanariote 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, Galați, the Cantacuzène house in Moldavia, Romania, where he remained until the autumn of 1939.[2] On learning that Britain had declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 Leigh Fermor immediately left Romania for home and enlisted in the army.[10] He did not meet Cantacuzène again until 1965.[11]

Second World War

Members of the Kreipe abduction team (from l. to r.): Georgios Tyrakis, Moss, Leigh Fermor, Emmanouil Paterakis, and Antonios Papaleonidas. The two British officers are in German uniform.

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Main article: Kidnapping of Heinrich Kreipe

As an officer cadet Leigh Fermor trained alongside Derek Bond[12] and Iain Moncreiffe. He later joined the Irish Guards. His knowledge of modern Greek gained him a commission in the General List in August 1940[13] 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, and was among 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 Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander, Major General Heinrich Kreipe.[14] There is a memorial commemorating Kreipe's abduction near Archanes in Crete.[15]

Moss featured the events of the Cretan capture in his book Ill Met by Moonlight.[6] (The 2014 edition contains an afterword on the context, written by Leigh Fermor in 2001.) It was adapted in a film by the same name, directed/produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and released in 1957 with Leigh Fermor played by Dirk Bogarde.[2] Leigh Fermor's own account Abducting A General – The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete appeared in October 2014.[16][17]

During periods of leave, Leigh Fermor spent time at Tara, a villa in Cairo rented by Moss, where the "rowdy household" of SOE officers was presided over by Countess Zofia (Sophie) Tarnowska.[2]

Wartime honours

Leigh Fermor, photographed by Dimitri Papadimos

Post-war

In 1950 Leigh Fermor published his first book, The Traveller's Tree, about his post-war travels in the Caribbean, which won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and established his career. The reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement wrote: "Mr Leigh Fermor never loses sight of the fact, not always grasped by superficial visitors, that most of the problems of the West Indies are the direct legacy of the slave trade."[20] It was quoted extensively in Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming.[21] He went on to write several other books of his journeys, including Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece.

Central part of Leigh Fermor's villa at Kalamitsi, Kardamyli
Leigh Fermor's office, c. 2009, view of French wallpaper
Desk in Leigh Fermor's garden near Kardamyli, 2007
Leigh Fermor's grave at St Peter's, Dumbleton, Gloucestershire

Leigh Fermor translated the manuscript The Cretan Runner written by George Psychoundakis, a dispatch runner on Crete during the war, and helped Psychoundakis get his work published. Leigh Fermor also wrote a novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, which was adapted as an opera by Malcolm Williamson. His friend Lawrence Durrell recounts in his book Bitter Lemons (1957) how in 1955, during the Cyprus Emergency, Leigh Fermor visited Durrell's villa in Bellapais, 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.[22]

Later years

After living with her for many years, Leigh Fermor was married in 1968 to the Honourable Joan Elizabeth Rayner (née Eyres Monsell), daughter of Bolton Eyres-Monsell, 1st Viscount Monsell. She accompanied him on many travels until her death in Kardamyli in June 2003, aged 91. They had no children.[23] They lived part of the year in a house in an olive grove near Kardamyli in the Mani Peninsula, southern Peloponnese, and part of the year in Gloucestershire.

In 2007, he said that, for the first time, he had decided to work using a typewriter, having written all his books longhand until then.[3]

Leigh Fermor opened his home in Kardamyli to the local villagers on his saint's day, which was 8 November, the feast of Michael (he had assumed the name Michael while fighting with the Greek resistance).[24] New Zealand writer Maggie Rainey-Smith (staying in the area while researching for her next book) joined in his saint's day celebration in November 2007, and after his death, posted some photographs of the event.[25][26] The house at Kardamyli features in the 2013 film Before Midnight.[27]

Leigh Fermor influenced a generation of British travel writers, including Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thubron, Philip Marsden, Nicholas Crane and Rory Stewart.[28]

Death and funeral

Leigh Fermor was noted for his strong physical constitution, even though he smoked 80 to 100 cigarettes a day.[29] Although in his last years he suffered from tunnel vision and wore hearing aids, he remained physically fit up to his death and dined at table on the last evening of his life.

For the last few months of his life Leigh Fermor suffered from a cancerous tumour, and in early June 2011 he underwent a tracheotomy in Greece. As death was close, according to local Greek friends, he expressed a wish to visit England to bid goodbye to his friends, and then return to die in Kardamyli, though it is also stated that he actually wished to die in England and be buried next to his wife.[30]

Leigh Fermor died in England aged 96, on 10 June 2011, the day after his return.[31] His funeral was held at St Peter's Church, Dumbleton, Gloucestershire, on 16 June 2011. A Guard of Honour was provided by serving and former members of the Intelligence Corps, and a bugler from the Irish Guards sounded the Last Post and Reveille. He is buried next to his wife in the churchyard there. The Greek inscription is a quotation from Cavafy[32] translatable as "In addition, he was that best of all things, Hellenic".

Awards and honours

Leigh Fermor's signature-and-address manuscript stamp, in Greek

Legacy

A Patrick Leigh Fermor Society formed in 2014.[38]

The National Archives in London holds copies of Leigh Fermor's wartime dispatches from occupied Crete in file number HS 5/728.

A repository of many of his letters, books, postcards and other miscellaneous writings can be found within the Patrick Leigh Fermor Archive at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Works

Books

Translations

Screenplay

Periodicals

  • "A Monastery", in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 979, Summer 1949.
  • "From Solesmes to La Grande Trappe", in The Cornhill Magazine,[41] John Murray, London, no. 982, Spring 1950.
  • "Voodoo Rites in Haiti", in World Review, London, October 1950.
  • "The Rock-Monasteries of Cappadocia", in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 986, Spring 1951.
  • "The Monasteries of the Air", in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 987, Summer 1951.
  • "The Entrance to Hades",[42] in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 1011, Spring 1957.
  • "Swish! Swish! Swish!",[43] originally written for the Greek edition of Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, first appeared in The London Review of Books, London, Vol. 43, No. 15, 29 July 2021.

Books about Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor

  • Artemis Cooper: Patrick Leigh Fermor. An Adventure (2012)
  • Dolores Payás: Drink Time! In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor (2014)
  • Helias Doundoulakis, Gabriella Gafni: My Unique Lifetime Association with Patrick Leigh Fermor (2015)
  • Simon Fenwick: Joan. The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor (2017)
  • Michael O'Sullivan: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Noble Encounters between Budapest and Transylvania (2018)

See also

Others with or alongside the SOE in Crete:

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Sir Max Hastings first met Leigh Fermor in his early twenties: "Across the lunch table of a London club, hearing him swapping anecdotes, in four or five languages, quite effortlessly, without showing off. I was just jaw-dropped." bbc.com.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Smith, Helena "Literary legend learning to type at 92", The Guardian (2 March 2007).
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ His mother, who was born 26 April 1890 and died, at 54 Marine Parade, Brighton, on 22 October 1977, was the daughter of Charles Taafe Ambler (1840–1925), whose father was Warrant Officer (William) James Ambler on HMS Bellerophon, with Captain Maitland, when Napoleon surrendered. Muriel and Lewis married on 2 April 1890.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Alison Flood, "Patrick Leigh Fermor's final volume will be published", The Guardian (20 December 2011).
  10. ↑ Cooper, Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, 2012, p. 120.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Derek Bond, Steady, Old Man! Don't You Know There's a War On? (1990), London: Leo Cooper, ISBN 0-85052-046-0, p. 19.
  13. ↑ "General List" The London Gazette Supplement (20 August 1940), Issue 34928, p. 5146.
  14. ↑ Patrick Howarth, Undercover: The Men and Women of the SOE, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000; ISBN 978-1-84212-240-2.
  15. ↑ Georgios Banasakis, "Αφιέρωμα στη μνήμη της ομάδας απαγωγής του διοικητή των Γερμανικών Δυνάμεων κατοχής (στρατηγού Κράιπε) 24-04-1944" ("Tribute to the memory of the abduction of the Governor of the German occupation (General Kraipe) 24-04-1944") (photograph) Archived 9 March 2019 at the Wayback Machine (23 September 2008).
  16. ↑ Patrick Leigh Fermor, Abducting a General, John Murray, 2014.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ "To be Additional Officers of the Military Division of the said Most Excellent Order" The London Gazette (14 October 1943), Issue 36209, p. 4540.
  19. ↑ "The Distinguished Service Order" The London Gazette (13 July 1944), Issue 36605, p. 3274.
  20. ↑ Cooper, Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, 2012, p. 250.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Durrell, Lawrence. Bitter Lemons, pp. 103–104.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ "Travelling man: Biographer of a charmer" (review), The Economist (20 October 2012).
  30. ↑ "The Man of the Mani", Radio 4 (22 June 2015).
  31. ↑ Associated Press.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ "Leigh Fermor, Patrick Michael", International Who's Who of Authors and Writers, 2004.
  36. ↑ Hastings, Max. "Patrick Leigh Fermor: Profile", The Daily Telegraph, 4 January 2004.
  37. ↑ Diplomatic Service and Overseas List The London Gazette (31 December 2003)
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ James Campbell, "Patrick Leigh Fermor obituary", The Guardian (10 June 2011)
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ edited by Peter Quennell
  42. ↑ about the Mani
  43. ↑ on the Mani olive harvest.

Further reading

External links

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