Dates

• Existence: 1915 - 2011

Biography

Patrick “Paddy” Leigh Fermor was born and educated in England. Between 1933 and 1935 he travelled, largely on foot, from Rotterdam to Istanbul, then onwards to Mount Athos in Greece. Much later in life, he wrote two of his most celebrated books, ‘A Time of Gifts’ (1977) and ‘Between the Woods and the Water’ (1986), about part of this journey. A third posthumous volume, ‘The Broken Road’ (2013), edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper, was based on ‘The Green Diary’ (his only surviving diary from the journey) and a draft from the 1960s entitled ‘A Youthful Journey’.

He met the Romanian princess Balasha Cantacuzène in Athens in 1935, and the two lived together at Lemonodassos, Greece, and then at the Cantacuzène estate in Băleni, Romania, until the outbreak of war in 1939.

Working as a Special Operations Executive officer behind enemy lines in Crete during World War II, he led the party that kidnapped the German General Heinrich Kreipe. The story of the abduction was later adapted into a film, ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’ (1957), based on the 1950 book of the same name by Leigh Fermor’s second in command, William Stanley Moss. Leigh Fermor’s account of events was published posthumously as ‘Abducting a General’ (2014).

After the war, he travelled with, among others, his future wife, the talented photographer Joan Rayner, née Eyres Monsell, whom he had met in Cairo. In the 1950s and 60s his reputation as a gifted writer grew through his articles and books, particularly “The Traveller’s Tree” (1950), which describes a journey through the Caribbean, and ‘Mani’ (1958) and ‘Roumeli’ (1966), about his travels in remote areas of Greece.

In 1963 he and Joan, with help from friends and locals, built a house near the village of Kardamyli on the coast of the Mani peninsula in Greece where, in between various travels, they lived for the rest of their lives. Leigh Fermor received a number of awards, both literary and military, and was knighted in 2004.

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