Praise for Patrick Leigh Fermor's writing: 'Elegant and vividly exotic ... done with brilliant aesthetic feeling and a charming philosophic melancholy' -- The Times 'Delightful ... not only an admirable piece of travel writing; it is also a brilliant piece of human exploration' -- New Statesman 'A wandering scholar but with a difference: unlike the celebrated travellers of the past he has become part of the country he describes' -- Sunday Times 'Beautiful is the adjective which comes uppermost ... Patrick Leigh Fermor is a writer with outstanding descriptive powers' -- John Betjeman 'Patrick Leigh Fermor is a stylish, superb master of words, which he savours like the choicest vintage' -- The Times 'Leigh Fermor is an exquisite among travel writers ... Having a polished sense of poetry and a bright sense of humour, he outshines Lawrence' -- Sunday Telegraph 'Leigh Fermor's achievement was, like Proust, to have rendered the past visible, and to have preserved a civilisation which has since been swept away like leaves in a storm. The books are also a brilliantly sustained evocation in youthful exhilaration and joy, and perhaps the nearest equivalent in English to Alain-Fournier's masterpiece of nostalgia, Le Grand Meaulnes' -- Daily Telegraph 'He makes exotic and entertaining friends wherever he goes, has read everything, been everywhere, known everyone and writes like a dream' -- The Times 'He is the greatest travel writer of the last century, a master of English prose ... no one has written so well about what it is like to be young and hopeful, with one's future spread before one' -- Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review,

Following his walk across Europe, Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) lived and travelled in the Balkans and Greek Archipelago. He joined the Irish Guards and during the occupation of Crete led the party that captured the German commander. He was awarded the DSO and OBE.