Patrick Leigh Fermor

Leigh Fermor was born in London, the son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (Eileen), daughter of Charles Taafe Ambler.[5] Shortly after his birth, his mother and sister left to join his father in India, leaving the infant Patrick in England with a family in Northamptonshire: first in the village of Weedon, and later in nearby Dodford. He did not meet his parents or his sister again until he was four years old. As a child Leigh Fermor had problems with academic structure and limitations, and was sent to a school for "difficult" children. He was later expelled from The King's School, Canterbury after he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter.

His last report from The King's School noted that the young Leigh Fermor was "a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness".[6] He continued learning by reading texts on Greek, Latin, Shakespeare and history, with the intention of entering the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Gradually he changed his mind, deciding to become an author instead, and in the summer of 1933 relocated to Shepherd Market in London, living with a few friends. Soon, faced with the challenges of an author's life in London and rapidly draining finances, he decided to leave for Europe.[7]

Members of the Kreipe abduction team (from l. to r.): Georgios Tyrakis, Moss, Leigh Fermor, Emmanouil Paterakis, and Antonios Papaleonidas. The two British officers are in German uniform.

As an officer cadet Leigh Fermor trained alongside Derek Bond[12] and Iain Moncreiffe. He later joined the Irish Guards. His knowledge of modern Greek gained him a commission in the General List in August 1940[13] and he became a liaison officer in Albania. He fought in Crete and mainland Greece. During the German occupation, he returned to Crete three times, once by parachute, and was among a small number of Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers posted to organise the island's resistance to the occupation. Disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michalis or Filedem, he lived for over two years in the mountains. With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander, Major General Heinrich Kreipe.[14] There is a memorial commemorating Kreipe's abduction near Archanes in Crete.[15]

Moss featured the events of the Cretan capture in his book Ill Met by Moonlight.[6] (The 2014 edition contains an afterword on the context, written by Leigh Fermor in 2001.) It was adapted in a film by the same name, directed/produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and released in 1957 with Leigh Fermor played by Dirk Bogarde.[2] Leigh Fermor's own account Abducting A General – The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete appeared in October 2014.[16][17]

During periods of leave, Leigh Fermor spent time at Tara, a villa in Cairo rented by Moss, where the "rowdy household" of SOE officers was presided over by Countess Zofia (Sophie) Tarnowska.[2]

Leigh Fermor, photographed by Dimitri Papadimos

• Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE)[18]
• The Distinguished Service Order (DSO)[19]
• Honorary Citizen of Heraklion, of Kardamyli and of Gytheio

In 1950 Leigh Fermor published his first book, The Traveller's Tree, about his post-war travels in the Caribbean, which won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and established his career. The reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement wrote: "Mr Leigh Fermor never loses sight of the fact, not always grasped by superficial visitors, that most of the problems of the West Indies are the direct legacy of the slave trade."[20] It was quoted extensively in Live and Let Die, by Ian Fleming.[21] He went on to write several other books of his journeys, including Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese and Roumeli, of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece.

Central part of Leigh Fermor's villa at Kalamitsi, Kardamyli

Leigh Fermor's office, c. 2009, view of French wallpaper

Desk in Leigh Fermor's garden near Kardamyli, 2007

Leigh Fermor's grave at St Peter's, Dumbleton, Gloucestershire

Leigh Fermor translated the manuscript The Cretan Runner written by George Psychoundakis, a dispatch runner on Crete during the war, and helped Psychoundakis get his work published. Leigh Fermor also wrote a novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, which was adapted as an opera by Malcolm Williamson. His friend Lawrence Durrell recounts in his book Bitter Lemons (1957) how in 1955, during the Cyprus Emergency, Leigh Fermor visited Durrell's villa in Bellapais, Cyprus:

After a splendid dinner by the fire he starts singing, songs of Crete, Athens, Macedonia. When I go out to refill the ouzo bottle.... I find the street completely filled with people listening in utter silence and darkness. Everyone seems struck dumb. 'What is it?' I say, catching sight of Frangos. 'Never have I heard of Englishmen singing Greek songs like this!' Their reverent amazement is touching; it is as if they want to embrace Paddy wherever he goes.[22]

Leigh Fermor was noted for his strong physical constitution, even though he smoked 80 to 100 cigarettes a day.[29] Although in his last years he suffered from tunnel vision and wore hearing aids, he remained physically fit up to his death and dined at table on the last evening of his life.

For the last few months of his life Leigh Fermor suffered from a cancerous tumour, and in early June 2011 he underwent a tracheotomy in Greece. As death was close, according to local Greek friends, he expressed a wish to visit England to bid goodbye to his friends, and then return to die in Kardamyli, though it is also stated that he actually wished to die in England and be buried next to his wife.[30]

Leigh Fermor died in England aged 96, on 10 June 2011, the day after his return.[31] His funeral was held at St Peter's Church, Dumbleton, Gloucestershire, on 16 June 2011. A Guard of Honour was provided by serving and former members of the Intelligence Corps, and a bugler from the Irish Guards sounded the Last Post and Reveille. He is buried next to his wife in the churchyard there. The Greek inscription is a quotation from Cavafy[32] translatable as "In addition, he was that best of all things, Hellenic".

Leigh Fermor's signature-and-address manuscript stamp, in Greek

• 1950, Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature for The Traveller's Tree
• 1978, WH Smith Literary Award for A Time of Gifts
• 1991, elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature[33]
• 1991, awarded the title Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature[34]
• 1995, Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres[35]
• February 2004, accepted the knighthood (Knight Bachelor), which he had declined in 1991[36][37]
• 2004, awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers
• 2007, the Greek government made him Commander of the Order of the Phoenix[3]
• His life and work were profiled by the travel writer Benedict Allen in the documentary series Travellers' Century (2008) on BBC Four
• A documentary film on the Cretan resistance The 11th Day (2003) contains extensive interview segments with Leigh Fermor recounting his service in the S.O.E. and his activities on Crete, including the capture of General Kreipe.

A Patrick Leigh Fermor Society formed in 2014.[38]

The National Archives in London holds copies of Leigh Fermor's wartime dispatches from occupied Crete in file number HS 5/728.

A repository of many of his letters, books, postcards and other miscellaneous writings can be found within the Patrick Leigh Fermor Archive at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Books

• Fermor, Patrick Leigh (2001). The Traveller's Tree. ISBN 9781589760981. (1950)
• The Violins of Saint-Jacques. 1977. (1953)
• A Time to Keep Silence (1957), with photographs by Joan Eyres Monsell.[39] This was an early product of the Queen Anne Press, a company managed by Leigh Fermor's friend Ian Fleming. In it he describes his experiences in several monasteries, and the profound effect the time spent there had on him.
• Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958)
• Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (1966)
• A Time of Gifts – On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (1977, published by John Murray)
• Between the Woods and the Water – On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland: the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates (1986)
• Three Letters from the Andes (1991)
• Words of Mercury (2003), edited by Artemis Cooper
• Introduction to Into Colditz by Lt Colonel Miles Reid (Michael Russell Publishing Ltd, Wilton, 1983). The story of Reid's captivity in Colditz and eventual escape by faking illness so as to qualify for repatriation. Reid had served with Leigh Fermor in Greece and was captured there trying to defend the Corinth Canal bridge in 1941.
• Foreword of Albanian Assignment by Colonel David Smiley (Chatto & Windus, London, 1984). The story of SOE in Albania, by a brother in arms of Leigh Fermor, who was later an MI6 agent.
• In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor (2008), edited by Charlotte Mosley. (Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest of the six Mitford sisters, was the wife of the 11th Duke of Devonshire).
• The Broken Road – Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos (2013), edited by Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron from PLF's unfinished manuscript of the third volume of his account of his walk across Europe in the 1930s.[40]
• Abducting A General – The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete (2014)
• Dashing for the Post: the Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor (2017), edited by Adam Sisman
• More Dashing: Further Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor (2018), edited by Adam Sisman

Translations

• No Innocent Abroad (published in United States as Forever Ulysses) by C. P. Rodocanachi (1938)
• Julie de Carneilhan and Chance Acquaintances by Colette (1952)
• The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation by George Psychoundakis (1955)

Screenplay

• The Roots of Heaven (1958) adventure film, directed by John Huston

Periodicals

• "A Monastery", in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 979, Summer 1949.
• "From Solesmes to La Grande Trappe", in The Cornhill Magazine,[41] John Murray, London, no. 982, Spring 1950.
• "Voodoo Rites in Haiti", in World Review, London, October 1950.
• "The Rock-Monasteries of Cappadocia", in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 986, Spring 1951.
• "The Monasteries of the Air", in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 987, Summer 1951.
• "The Entrance to Hades",[42] in The Cornhill Magazine, London, no. 1011, Spring 1957.
• "Swish! Swish! Swish!",[43] originally written for the Greek edition of Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, first appeared in The London Review of Books, London, Vol. 43, No. 15, 29 July 2021.

• Artemis Cooper: Patrick Leigh Fermor. An Adventure (2012)
• Dolores Payás: Drink Time! In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor (2014)
• Helias Doundoulakis, Gabriella Gafni: My Unique Lifetime Association with Patrick Leigh Fermor (2015)
• Simon Fenwick: Joan. The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor (2017)
• Michael O'Sullivan: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Noble Encounters between Budapest and Transylvania (2018)

Others with or alongside the SOE in Crete:

• Dennis Ciclitira
• Xan Fielding
• George Doundoulakis
• Helias Doundoulakis
• Kimonas Zografakis

Notes

Further reading

• Artemis Cooper,Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure John Murray, 2012; New York Review of Books, 2013)
• Dolores Payás Drink Time! (In the Company (En Compañía con) of Patrick Leigh Fermor) (Acantilado, 2013; Bene Factum Publishing 2014)
• John Ure (January 2015). "Fermor, Sir Patrick Michael [Paddy] Leigh (1915–2011)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/103763. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Patrick Leigh Fermor.

• Works by or about Patrick Leigh Fermor at Internet Archive
• Andy Walker, "Patrick Leigh Fermor: Crossing Europe and kidnapping a German general", BBC, 9 October 2014
• Faces of the Week: hear Leigh Fermor's voice there
• Long Distance Paths E6, E8 and E3 trace similar routes across Europe
• Official site of the documentary film The 11th Day, which contains an extensive interview with Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, and documents the Battle of Trahili, filmed in 2003
• Profile in the New Yorker by Anthony Lane; published 22 May 2006