Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Life in Letters

Few people have lived as peripatetic a life as did travel writer Fermor (1915–2011). Even leaving aside the adventures that made his reputation—his walk from Holland to Istanbul and his activities during WWII as a resistance leader in Nazi-occupied Crete—he spent most of his life flitting from place to place. These travels included sojourns with glamorous friends and writer’s retreats in remote locales, the latter in an often-futile effort to combat his penchant for procrastination. Through it all, he maintained a voluminous correspondence with a veritable who’s who of famous friends, including Diana Cooper, Lawrence Durrell, and Ann Fleming. His letters have a breezy, insouciant quality that’s charming, albeit ultimately repetitive. Above all, Fermor had a brilliant knack for capturing vivid details, such as noting of the older men at a church service on the Greek island of Hydra, “nearly all of them limp from sponge fishing mishaps.” Many of his epistles came decorated with humorous drawings, reproduced here. The drawback to this expansive volume, conscientiously curated and annotated by Sisman (Boswell’s Presumptuous Task) is that Fermor himself never seems to grow and develop; the letters go from 1940 to 2010, but Fermor remains a somewhat superficial if engaging correspondent. The collection will be most appreciated by fans who want to savor more of his descriptive flair. (Nov.)