Patrick Leigh Fermor: ‘An Englishman Abroad’

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  05.31.06 | 10:53 PM ET

A few weeks ago, we declared (with the help of Thomas Swick) “A Time of Gifts” by Patrick Leigh Fermor one of the greatest travel books of all time. Leigh Fermor, now in his 90s, is not as well known to many American readers as other great travel writers of our time. So it was a pleasant surprise to find, in the May 22 issue of the New Yorker, a lengthy profile of Leigh Fermor by Anthony Lane. The story describes a writer who has lived one of the most compelling lives of the 20th century—so fascinating, in fact, that Lane insists it makes the rest of our lives “laughably provincial in their scope.”

Writes Lane:

We fret about our kids’ S.A.T. scores, whereas this man, when he was barely more than a kid himself, shouldered a rucksack and walked from Rotterdam to Istanbul. In his sixties, he swam the Hellespont, in homage to Lord Byron—his hero, and to some extent his template. (He once hunted down a pair of the poet’s slippers, “their toes turning up at the tip,” in Missolonghi.) In between, he has joined a cavalry charge, played a game of polo on bicycles outside a Hungarian castle, observed a voodoo ceremony in Haiti, and plunged into a love affair with a princess. He has feasted atop a moonlit tower, with wine and roast lamb hauled up by rope. He has dwelled soundlessly among Trappist monks. He has built himself a house on the soutehrn coast of Greece, where he still resides. He has written seven travel books and a novel, though which is which one cannot readily say, for the travel books pass from fiercely empirical to the fantastic without drawing a breath.

Lane notes that “A Time of Gifts” and another travel book, “Between the Woods and the Water,” cover “the first two-thirds of that footsore trek to Istanbul,” and that Leigh Fermor has long talked of writing the concluding volume. “I’m absolutely longing to get at it,” Leigh Fermor told Lane.

We hope he does.

Unfortunately, Lane’s story is not available online. It’s well worth a read.

Tags: Caribbean, Haiti, Life of a Travel Writer, Literary Travel


No comments for Patrick Leigh Fermor: ‘An Englishman Abroad’.

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.