From Spotlight on Military News and International Affairs:
...Lives Lived
James Campbell -- The Guardian
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor has died aged 96 - More - More - More
Plus at Arts & Letters Daily (not quite what one might think in terms of leanings--take a look):
Patrick Leigh Fermor, warrior, scholar, autodidact, travel writer, extraordinary raconteur, is dead at 96... Telegraph... Jan Morris... Christopher Hitchens... Robert Kaplan
I've read A Time of Gifts : on Foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube and Between the Woods and the Water.
Wonderful books (I hitchhiked around Europe and Morocco when 18).
Update: More at National Review Online:
...As a young man, he’d walked through pre-war Hungary and Romania...Those walks provided the material for books that evoke Central Europe as it then was, now far away and long ago, before politics destroyed the picturesque [truly a vanished world--the Hungarian uppercrust, in whatever post-Trianon county, are marvellous]....The great and unforgettable exploit was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commanding officer in Crete...At another point as dawn was coming up on Mount Ida, General Kreipe quoted the opening lines of Horace’s ode praising this very snow-capped sight, whereupon Paddy recited the remaining verses.
“Ach so, Herr Major,” was the compliment with which the general ended this exchange, as unexpected as it is chivalrous. Stanley Moss wrote up the whole exploit in a memoir, Ill Met by Moonlight. I could never get Paddy to say much about it, except that he thought the film of the book was not much good. Could there be men like that again?..
Fermor is definitely worth a read. He was a true renaissance man. As a young lad, he was kicked out of boarding school for being involved with a greengrocer's daughter. He was a great story teller and had many lifetimes worth of adventures. If anyone deserved to make it to 96, it was Paddy.
Not sure what to say. At the risk of giving away my online ID, he was referred to in our house as Grand-Uncle Leigh and we heard snippets about him as I was growing up. Yet I never felt close enough to visit him. This is something I do regret. I was told by a couple of people that I look like him and when they did so, I raised my eyebrow and scrunched my face as I am wont to do whereupon they immediately said, "See, he's got that bit of Paddy in him." Needless to say, I'd become rather self-conscious after that.
And the fun I've had in life, be it the time in the military, or the travels and adventures, pale in comparison to his. Life is short. His was filled with adventure and cameraderie. He was the measure of "success" in our family, though it was never couched in those terms. I owe it to him and to myself to strive to drink as deep from the cup life offers.
14 links on one subject is too many for my small, undeveloped brain - although I confess I do enjoy your posts. I'll wait for someone who will post the subject in a less time consuming way.
Sorry that should be 15 links - but I lost count after (excessive) drinking of Molson beers in anticipation of the impending Bruin win..
A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water occupy a place of honour on my bookshelves. Possibly the finest travel books of the many I've read. Very touching, moving, like they said at the link, a trip through a world that was about to be horribly, violently, erased, first by the nazis, then by the communists. Being passed along a chain of often penniless aristocrats as he travelled, snuggling in a hay stack with a peasant girl, dream-like books, perfect.
I had the good fortune to meet a gent of that generation and genure.....unfortunately fate had placed him on the other side.....Otto Skorzeny.
He never wrote to my knowledge but when I met him, he was an old man exiled in Spain. He reminiced about that long gone era.
His face bore the sabre scar that many of his lineage bore as a badge of honour.
I first heard about Patrick Leigh Fermor in Crete a couple of years ago and about George Psychoundakis, a resistance fighter in Crete in WWII, whose autobiography The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation was translated by Leigh Fermor. Leigh Fermor is held in very high regard by the people of Crete.
RIP, Mr. Leigh Fermor.
Orlin at June 15, 2011 5:40 PM, “14 links on one subject is too many for my small, undeveloped brain - although I confess I do enjoy your posts. I'll wait for someone who will post the subject in a less time consuming way.”
With due respect, orlin, too bad for you. I’ve read nearly all of the links about the Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor and have been delighted to learn about this “rogue gentleman”!
Here’s one anecdote I particularly enjoyed, from The Independent:
“ . . . The lecture was supposed to be on British culture, but he had been persuaded to talk about his wartime exploits on Crete. Leigh Fermor took sips from a large glass as he spoke and when it was nearly finished, he topped it up from a carafe of water. The liquid turned instantly cloudy: he had added water to a nearly empty tumbler of neat ouzo.
“A roar of appreciation went up from the audience at this impromptu display of leventeia. A quality prized in Greece, leventeia indicates high spirits, humour, quickness of mind and action, charm, generosity, the love of living dangerously and a readiness for anything. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor had leventeia in spades.”
I know about many of Leigh Fermor’s contemporaries and am astonished about my complete ignorance of this fascinating fellow: my loss—which I’ll now rectify!
“Leventeia”: a person with that is worth a million links!!
I remember watching that movie when I was a teenager. I'd missed the beginning of the film and assumed throughout (until reading this thread in fact!) that it was just movie fiction, too incredible to be true. That really was an astounding exploit! Reading the linked Telegraph obit, I was surprised to read that Mr. Fermor only received a DSO for that feat of arms-it strikes me as definitely worthy of a VC.
It seems that men of Leigh Fermor caliber are in short supply these days. Society seems to prefer the squishy empty ones.
RIP Mr. Fermor.
Ken (Kulak)
Fear not....they walk amongst us...they just don't write books.....I am positive I have met some...
They are just different to Leigh Fermor...like the times.
My hypothesis is that circumstances creates them.
Thank-you Mark for posting links to the life and times of Leigh Fermor. What an extraordinary Man! I plan to read his books. Thank-you again; very much!
The Magnificent 'Klondike' Joe Boyle was such a Man. He lived more in one week than most men live in a lifetime. 'We should take a good long look for we are not likely to see the like of such men pass this way again'. (not a direct quote but close, I wish I could claim that thought but I cannot, I read it and it comes to mind whenever I hear about men like Leigh Fermor.)
lookout - your feedback is appreciated.