{"product_id":"patrick-leigh-fermor-an-adventure-isbn-9781590177808","title":"Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure","description":"Patrick  Leigh Fermor’s enviably colorful life took off when in 1934, at the age  of eighteen, he decided to walk across Europe. In just over a year he  had trekked through nine countries and taught himself three languages,  and his enthusiasm and curiosity for every kind of experience made him  equally happy in caves or country houses, among shepherds or countesses.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e At the outbreak of war he left his lover, Princess Balasha Cantacuzene,  in Romania and returned to England to enlist. Commissioned into the  Intelligence Corps, he became one of the handful of Allied officers  supporting the Cretan resistance to the German occupation. In 1944 he  commanded the Anglo-Cretan team that abducted General Heinrich Kreipe  and spirited him away to Egypt.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A journey to the Caribbean,  stays in monasteries, and explorations all over Greece provided the  subjects for his first books. It was not until he and his wife had moved  to southern Greece that he returned to his earliest walk. In these  books, which took many years to write, he created a vision of a prewar  Europe, which in its beauty and abundance has never been equaled.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with  Leigh Fermor and his closest friends, and has had complete access to his  archive. Her beautifully crafted biography, now available in paperback, portrays a man of  extraordinary gifts—no one wore their learning so playfully nor inspired  such passionate friendship.“The most beautifully written of modern “travel books” — an awkward term — may well be Patrick Leigh Fermor’s \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e (1977) closely followed by its sequel \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e (1986). These two volumes lyrically memorialize a youthful walk across  Europe in 1933-34, starting from the Hook of Holland and passing through  Germany and much of Eastern Europe....Artemis Cooper’s excellent biography, \u003ci\u003ePatrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure\u003c\/i\u003e,  fills in the details, corrects errors and makes clear that Paddy — as  he was always known — often conflated incidents or fudged details in his  writing, sometimes for reasons of art, sometimes to protect a friend or  a woman’s reputation.” —Michael Dirda, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Surprise is  the keynote of the best travel writing.  The travel writer should be  knowledgeable but not an expert, open in mind and body to the unforeseen  twists of serendipity. But what we most require from travel writing...  is that elusive quality Nick Carraway defined as 'romantic readiness.'  Few 20th- century figures combined these traits in a more appealing  package than the English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor.....Now Artemis  Cooper has written an affectionately intimate, informative and forgiving  biography....\"— Christopher Benfey, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This  engaging work sheds light on the life of one of Britain's greatest  travel writers, with particular detail on his time in Greece, his war  escapades, and his struggles with writing.  Recommended for lovers of  armchair travel and those who enjoyed Sir Patrick's own writings. \"— \u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Artemis  Cooper has done a brilliant job of piecing together the shards of  evidence about this glamorous but elusive writer, who seemed not to be  able to resist mixing fact and fiction in his own life story.” —John  Eliot Gardiner, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A fondly admiring  account of the English wayfarer captures his enormously infectious  spirit...A solid biography that should introduce more readers to Leigh  Fermor's work.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In her arresting  biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor, an ever-curious  travel writer known  for experiencing locales at ground- level, Cooper, studies a man  determined to see the  world firsthand, with interviews from family and  friends, rare letters,  and diaries....Nostalgic and expertly written,  Cooper fleshes out Fermor, a man who  boldly traveled a world on the  edge of catastrophe, which he explained  in his writing to a faithful  readership.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e’s “50 Best Winter Reads”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Short-listed for the inaugural Waterstones “Book of the Year”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died last year [2011] at the age of 96, was  one of the travel-writing greats, a war hero who related his journeys as  a young man through Europe in classics such as \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e. Artemis Cooper draws on years of interviews with the author and his friends in this much-anticipated biography.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “He lived an inspirationally heterodox life that combined adventure and  reflection in unique measure. His story has hitherto been known only in  parts, and mostly through the refractive prism of his own telling. At  last his biography has been detailed in full, in Artemis Cooper’s tender  and excellent book. Reading it is an odd experience: there is the  melancholy of having one’s hero humanised, joined with renewed  astonishment at the miracle he made of himself.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Artemis Cooper’s funny, wise, learned but totally candid biography  reveals Leigh Fermor to be an adventurer through and through. The  artifice of effortless gentility is blown away and Paddy is revealed as a  much more interesting character, a fascinatingly self-made and  self-educated man. He is also placed in the pantheon of literary  liggers, a consummate lifelong freeloader, a prince among  sponge-artists, which he paid for with his unique energy, talent and  enthusiasm for song, dance, talk, memorised verse, drink and other men’s  wives.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A captivating  biography.... It is not easy writing a biography of someone who has  poured so much of his own life into his books, but Artemis Cooper has  done a brilliant job. The story rips along, as Leigh Fermor’s life did,  with friends and lovers, books and journeys and parties, all milling and  jostling around him in a noisy and joyous throng. And in the quieter  moments we are left with something far more enduring: a man for whom the  world was endlessly fascinating, and who found that he could recreate  for his readers with carefully crafted words the same wonder that it  gave him.” —Philip Marsden, \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “It is not  easy to convey the flavour of a man whose fame to a large extent rests  on his ebullient personality and conversation but Ms Cooper succeeds  admirably in this readable and entertaining book.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Artemis Cooper’s fine biography gives colour and substance to the  adventure, and a delicate, sympathetic portrait of the man who made it  his life.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Scotsman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A perceptive, haunting and highly readable biography.” —Philip Mansel,\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Spectator\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Leigh Fermor was funny, learned, sexy, irrepressible, flawed yet much  loved, remarkable and, at times, brilliant —not unlike this book.”  —Anthony Sattin, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Cooper’s book is the perfect memorial to this remarkable man.” —William Dalrymple, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Patrick Leigh Fermor walked from Holland to Constantinople in the  1930s, swam the Hellespont, captured a German general, wandered the  Caribbean, befriended everyone of consequence and wit, and wrote about  it all in some of the most elegant, sinuous prose of the century. His  friend Artemis Cooper has written the biography his singular life richly  deserves.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Beast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Happy the hero  who, after a lifetime of glorious achievement, in death finds a  biographer worthy of his memory. Patrick Leigh Fermor...has been so  widely celebrated in print, in film and in legend that the task of  writing another 400 pages about him would seem, as he might himself say,  Sisyphean. Artemis Cooper, however, rolls the immense boulder with an  apparently effortless grace, and makes this marvellous book less a mere  life story than an evocation.... He is justly commemorated in this  magnificent biography, and will surely be remembered for ever as one of  the very best of men.” —Jan Morris, \u003ci\u003eThe Telegraph\u003c\/i\u003eArtemis Cooper is the author of several books, including \u003ci\u003eCairo in the War, 1939–1945\u003c\/i\u003e; the authorized biography of Elizabeth David, \u003ci\u003eWriting at the Kitchen Table\u003c\/i\u003e; and with her husband, the historian Antony Beevor, \u003ci\u003eParis After the Liberation, 1944–1949\u003c\/i\u003e. Among the volumes she has edited are Patrick Leigh Fermor’s \u003ci\u003eWords of Mercury\u003c\/i\u003e and the correspondence between Evelyn Waugh and Cooper’s famous grandmother, Lady Diana Cooper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSix books by Patrick Leigh Fermor are published by NYRB Classics:  \u003ci\u003eA Time of Gifts\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eBetween the Woods and the Water\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eA Time to Keep Silence\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eMani\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eRoumeli\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eThe Traveller's Tree\u003c\/i\u003e. Also, NYRB is the publisher of \u003ci\u003eIn Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300760604901,"sku":"NP9781590177808","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590177808.jpg?v=1767734549","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/patrick-leigh-fermor-an-adventure-isbn-9781590177808","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}