I happened across a fascinating article on the BBC web site earlier today. It concerns the life of a chap called Patrick Leigh Fermor. A book of his, frankly outstanding, wartime adventures in north Africa has just been published.
His escapades in Nazi-occupied Egypt would have been enough for most mortals to dine out on for at least a thousand earth years. But with PLF, it appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. As an apparently unemployable 18-year-old, for example, he decided to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He travelled light, bringing only "several letters of introduction, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace's Odes".
I adore people like this, old-school genteel English nutters. He sounds like a man of enormous native intelligence and self-effacing good humour. He also had a reputation for being worldly and sophisticated, but utterly without pretension. On the strength of this article alone, I rushed down to the bookshop and bought his account of his extraordinary walk, A Time Of Gifts. I can't wait to get started on it.
Mrs O and I have a longish train journey to get through tomorrow and I cannot countenance train travel without a diverting tome to ease the path. Who knows where this new book lead me? If sufficiently inspired, I too might walk somewhere. Kazakhstan perhaps. How far is that? Hmm...maybe I'll start with Belgium.
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