From Memory to Myth: The Adventures of Patrick Leigh Fermor

A Time Of Gifts is one of the most extraordinary books I've read.

It's a slow read, because Paddy is an extraordinarily erudite narrator who loves purple prose. If it were just a description of what he saw while travelling in the early 1930s, it would be interesting enough; but it's far more than that. He's looking through educated and extremely romantic eyes at the old Europe, from Roman times to the Austro-Hungarian and Bohemian empires. At the slightest trigger he will go on a literary/historical flight of fancy.

And like all good travel writing, he meets people along the way who get him into and out of scrapes. A surprising swathe of mitteleuropean aristocracy and peasants. At the end of this journey somewhere (in a later book) he ends up as the boyfriend of a Romanian princess.

I didn't know he was a part of the SOE in WW2 and took part in the kidnapping of Kreipe on Crete. If anyone can get to the British Museum in London before July 15th, there's a free exhibition called "Charmed lives in Greece - Ghika, Craxton,Leigh Fermor" [1]. I hope to visit tomorrow.

[1] http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/charmed_li...