Sir Michael Stewart (1911–94), diplomat, British Ambassador to Greece 1967–71. He and his wife Damaris (née du Boulay) became close friends of the Leigh Fermors, as did their daughter Olivia.
Philip Toynbee (1916–81), writer and journalist, an old friend of PLF’s and an exuberant drinker.
Iris Tree (1897–1968), poet, actress and muse, daughter of actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. As a young woman she had been sought after as an artists’ model, being painted by Augustus John, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry; sculpted by Jacob Epstein; and photographed by Man Ray. She was first married to the New York artist Curtis Moffat; their son Ivan, a successful screenwriter, was also a friend of PLF’s. Her second marriage was to the actor and ex-officer of the Austrian cavalry, Count Friedrich von Ledebur-Wicheln. After their divorce they both appeared in the 1956 film, Moby Dick. She also appeared in a cameo in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.
Barbara Warner (1911–89), née Hutchinson, had been married to Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild, and Rex Warner before marrying Niko Ghika in 1961.
Rex Warner (1905–86), classicist, writer, poet and translator. As director of the British Institute in Athens, Warner had been PLF’s boss for a brief period after the war.
Janetta Woolley see Janetta Parladé
Pamela Wyndham-Quin, later Egremont (1925–2013), society beauty, wife of John Wyndham, 1st Baron Egremont (1920–72), and a long-standing friend of PLF’s.
Illustration Credits
Unless otherwise stated, the original letters and photographs are reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Additional Sources: Alamy: 6 below left/Ivan Vdovin. AP/Press Association Images: 16/Thanassis Stavrakis. Courtesy of the Benaki Museum – Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive, Athens: 7 below. Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images: 13 below. Joan Leigh Fermor: 12 below. Bridget Flemming: 15 below. Courtesy of Dagmar Ingrid Fischer: 14 below. Milton Gendel, Fondazione Primoli, Rome: 9, 12 above. Courtesy of the Estate of Enrica Soma Huston: 11 below. The Murray Collection: 6 above/watercolour by Peter Todd Mitchell, 6 below right. Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock: 10 below. Courtesy of Lyndall Passerini-Hopkinson (photograph by Josephine Powell):11 above.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if there are any errors or omissions, John Murray will be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent printings or editions.
Corfu, 1946: Paddy spent two weeks there as part of a British Council-sponsored lecture tour. ‘Huddling into the crowded caïque at three in the morning, with you shuddering and waving on the quay in evening dress, and all of us the worse for drink, was the perfect way to leave Corfu after that perfect fortnight,’ he wrote afterwards to his hostess on the island.
Paddy’s pre-war lover, Balasha Cantacuzène.
Paddy in his early twenties, during the time when he and Balasha were together in Rumania.
Paddy in moustache and civilian clothes, southern Crete, May 1943.
Major Leigh Fermor gives a post-war lecture on the operation to abduct General Kreipe.
Brothers-in-arms in Crete and friends ever after: Paddy and Alexander ‘Xan’ Fielding.
A rare shot of Paddy’s lover Joan Rayner, who disliked having her protograph taken (late 1940s).
Astride a mule in the Caribbean, during the winter of 1947–8.
Eye to eye with a Greek goat, aboard a caïque, c.1946.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s Paddy retreated to Normandy, for several spells, to concentrate on his writing. His letters to Joan from the monasteries in which he stayed were adapted into a short book, A Time to Keep Silence (1957), beginning a lifelong relationship with the publisher ‘Jock’ Murray. This picture shows Jock in the mid-1970s, at work on the chaotic manuscript of A Time of Gifts.
In bandana and sunhat.
With the painter Niko Ghika, in the studio at Ghika’s house on Hydra, early 1950s.
In the village of Samaria in ‘Cretan runner’ George Psychoundakis and the artist John Craxton are at the centre of the group.
With Eleni, daughter of Paddy’s wartime comrade Manoli Paterakis, at his village, Koustogerako in western Crete, c. 1951. During the war the village was burned by the Germans in reprisal
With Anna Venetia, daughter of Judy Montagu and her husband Milton Gendel, at the house Paddy built in Kardamyli. In his right hand is a coolie hat. The picture was taken in 1969, not long after work on the house was complete.
‘Dirk Bogarde, the actor who is doing one in the film [Ill Met by Moonlight], is absolutely charming–slim, handsome, nice speaking-voice and manner, a super-gent, the ghost of oneself twelve years ago.’
On location in Africa for The Roots of Heaven, Paddy could not resist the temptation to start an affair with the female lead, Juliette Greco.
Lyndall Birch, daughter of Antonia White and Tom Hopkinson. ‘I adored my time in Rome and adored you,’ Paddy wrote to her in Novermber 1958, ‘and greatly miss our secret conclaves.’
‘You are a lovely present to suddenly get, my darling Ricki. . .’ Enrica ‘Ricki’ Huston, the fourth and much younger wife of the film director John Huston, with whom Paddy began an affair in the winter of 1960–1.
Writing under a makeshift shelter in the garden at Kardamyli.
On the terrace at Kardamyli overlooking the sea.
With Ann Fleming at Sevenhampton, en route to a fancy-dress party. Paddy is dressed as the eighteenth-century French poet André Chenier. He is wearing tights borrowed from a parlour-maid.
‘It all went off painlessly, nearly as easy as getting a dog licence. . .’ The Leigh Fermors at Westminster Register Office on their wedding day, 17 January 1968.
‘We had both drunk at the same fountains long before . . .’ In 1972 Paddy was reunited with his old foe, General Kreipe, for a Greek television programme.
Paddy with Rudi Fischer, at Fischer’s flat in Budapest, 2001.
With Lady Diana Cooper in Greece, soon after she was widowed. She and Paddy exchanged long letters until her death in 1986.
‘I’m feeling tremendously buoyant and bucked about the whole In Tearing Haste project . . .’ With Deborah Devonshire at the Old Vicarage in the village of Edensor in 2008, not long after the publication of their correspondence.
In the garden at Kardamyli, December 2001. Note the pebble mosaic.
INDEX
The links below refer to the page references of the printed edition of this book. While the numbers do not correspond to the page numbers or locations on an electronic reading device, they are retained as they can convey useful information regarding the position and amount of space devoted to an indexed entry. Because the size of a page varies in reflowable documents such as this e-book, it may be necessary to scroll down to find the referenced entry after following a link.
Notes: Page numbers in bold indicate the first page of a letter to a correspondent. Titles of rank are generally the highest mentioned in the letters and notes.
Abdy, Lady Diane, 60
Achillopoulos, Costa, 5, 23–4
Action Française, 32
Akritas, Digenis, 126
Albania, 349
Alcuin of York, 414
Aleppo, Syria, 344
Alevizakis, Father John, 312
Alington, Napier Sturt, 3rd Baron, 309
Almanachos, Pierre: Récits Byzantins, 114
Aly Khan, Joan, 60
Ambler family, 306
American Vogue (magazine), 66–7
Amory, Mark Heathcote: edits Ann Fleming letters, 355n4, 356; and review of Blacker’s Along the Enchanted Way, 434
Amsterdam, 391
Anagnostou, Despoina, 191
Andes: PLF writes on, 275
Annie (French hotel maid), 215
Antrim, Randal McDonnell, 8th Earl of (‘Ran’), 318–19
Apocalypse Now (film), 333
Ar
gyropoulos, A., 234, 237
Arran, Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of (‘Boofie’), 118n1
Ashley-Cooper, Lady Lettice Mildred Mary, 196, 208
Aslan, Grégoire (‘Coco’), 156
Aspioti, Marie, 17
Asquith, Katherine Frances (née Horner; K.H.), 341
Asquith, Raymond, xviii, 341
Astor, Michael, 185, 189n3, 196, 307, 318
Athenogenis, George, 221
Athens Academy: PLF elected Corresponding member, 337, 339
Athos, Mount, 367, 384, 387
Averoff-Tossizza, Evangelos, 348
Ayer, A. J. (‘Freddie’), 136
Bacon, Francis, 407
Bagnold, Enid (Lady Jones), 347
Baïgeórgas, Charalambi, 74–5
Balfour, Frank, 71
Balfour, Patrick see Kinross, Patrick, 3rd Baron
Bandouvas, Manoli, 329
Baring, Maurice, 399
Barker, Nicolas, 54
Bashkirtzeff, Marie, 259
Bath, Henry Frederick Thynne, 10th Marquess of, xvi, 179, 183, 204, 276
Bath, Virginia, Marchioness of, 179, 204, 276
Bayley, John, 414
Beaton, Cecil, 142
Beatty, Lady Dorothy, 60
Beaumont, Graziella de, 167
Beaumont, Hugh (‘Binkie’), 136
Beevor, Antony, 413
Belchem, General David, 315
Belgrade, 113
Bell, Clive, 291
Bell, Gertrude, 345
Bell, Quentin: Virginia Woolf, 291n1
Beloyannis, Elpida, 425
Benaki Museum, Athens, 414
Bendern, Count John Gerard de, 67–8
Béraudière, Jacques Jean, Comte de la, 150
Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 136, 183, 298
Berners, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron, 207–8, 391
Bernstein, Henri: Evangeline (play), 65
Berry family, 142
Berry, John Seymour, 60
Betjeman, Sir John, 269; PLF parodies, xiv, 85–6; stays at Chagford, xiv; stays with PLF at Kardamyli, xv, 269; PLF stays with, 83–4; at Faringdon Hall, 208; and Myfanwy Piper, 393; at Georgian Society meeting, 403; Poems in the Porch, 102; ‘Salamis in Cyprus’, 125; ‘Sun and Fun’, 129n3
Betjeman, Penelope, Lady, 83–4, 208
Between the Woods and the Water (PLF), x, 302n15, 368, 370–1, 391
Beulah, Robert, 231
Bibesco, Prince Emmanuel, 234
Bibesco, Princess Martha, 234, 315
Bielek, Ria (‘Iza’), 361
Birch, Lyndall, 160, 164, 172, 175, 178; PLF’s love letters to, xiii, xix; PLF’s relations with, 160, 164–76
Blacker, William, 413, 434; Along the Enchanted Way, 434
Bloomsbury Group, 291
Blumenthal, Cecil, 172n3
Blunt, Wilfrid, 88–9
Bogarde, Dirk, xvi, 130–1
Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, 307
Bonham Carter, Mark, 356
Bonthorpe, George, 247
Borden, Mary see Spears, Mary, Lady
Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, Bishop of Meaux, 32
Boukas, Philip, 112
Boulenger, Jane, 246
Bowra, Sir (Cecil) Maurice (‘Eroica Rawbum’), 34, 72, 78, 93, 95, 155, 198, 224, 260
Box, George Herbert, 270
Bragg, Melvyn, 399
Branch, Guy Rawstron, 4, 16, 231, 307
Branch, Mamie, 231
Branch, Lady Prudence, 4, 16, 231
Brenan, Gerald, 291, 358–9, 370
British Council, x, 17, 23n5
Broken Road, The (PLF; posthumous), x, 288n2
Brooke, Rupert, 58
Bruern Abbey, Oxfordshire, 185, 199
Buccleuch, Mary (‘Molly)’, Duchess of (née Lascelles), 345
Bucharest, 354
Budapest, 353, 378–9, 387, 400
Bulgaria, 381–4
Bulmer, John, 407
Burgess, Guy, 70n13
Burlington, William Cavendish, Earl of, 403
Bush, George W., xviii, 423n5
Butler, Richard Austen (‘Rab’), 58
Byron, George Gordon, 6th Baron, xvi, 57, 74–5, 89, 217, 296–7
Byron, Robert: Letters Home, 404
Callas, Maria, 180
Callimachi, Princess Anne-Marie, 5
Cameron, Samantha, 347n
Cameroon (French Equatorial Africa), xvi, 153–8
Campbell, Robin Francis and Lady Mary Sybil (née St Clair-Erskine), 142
Campbell-Gray, Diana (née Cavendish), 228
Canfield, Cass, 73, 246, 255
Canfield, Jane Sage (née White), 255
Cantacuzène family, 409–11
Cantacuzène, Princess Balasha (Marie-Blanche), 11, 230, 234, 240, 256, 263, 275, 290, 304, 309, 311; PLF’s attachment to, xii–xiii, 10; post-war life, xii–xiii, 409; stays with Branch family, 6n2; PLF revisits in Rumania, 230–3, 286, 409; PLF sends books to, 234, 276; finds PLF’s pre-war diary, 237, 286; PLF sends walk book to, 290–1; death, 355n3
Cantacuzène, Hélène (‘Pomme’), 16, 230–1, 262, 354, 409
Cantacuzène, Pamela, 417, 420, 430, 417
Cantacuzène-Spéranski Prince Michel, 410; asks PLF to write foreword to book, 410, 417, 420–1, 430; death, 417
Cardiff, 203
Cardiff, Maurice, 119–20
Caribbean: PLF in, xi
Carleston, Dorothy, 88
Carnock, Frederick Archibald Nicolson, 2nd Baron, 186
Carol II, King of Rumania, 285n8
Carrington (film), 412
Carritt, Dr Christian, 428
Carta, General Angelo, 312
Casey, Diana ( Joan’s sister), 316
Castiglione, Baldassare: Il Cortegiano, 179, 338
Catargi, Ina (‘Ins’), 231, 233, 258, 309, 311
Catargi, Michel, 258
Cavendish, Lady Elizabeth, 84n2
Cavendish, Lady Emma, 134
Cavendish, Lord Peregrine (‘Stoker’), 134
Cavendish, Lady Sophia, 184
Cazalis, Anne Marie, 153
Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 392
Cecil, Lord David and Rachel (née MacCarthy), 307
Central America, 24
Chagford, Devon, xiv, 135–8, 141–2, 184
Channon, Henry (‘Chips’), 96
Chantilly, 64, 69, 94, 115
Chappell, William, 327n3
Charlemagne, Emperor of the West, 347, 414
Charles, Prince of Wales, 418
Chateaubriand, René, Vicomte de, 30
Chatsworth, Derbyshire, 107, 184–5, 197, 258, 276, 280, 315, 393, 417–18, 425
Chatwin, Bruce: visits PLF at Kardamyli, xv, 372, 376; illness and death, 393, 399–400
Chatwin, Elizabeth, 399–400
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 340
Chaudhuri, Nirad C., 283
Cheshire, David, 399
Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre Ambroise François, 214
Cholmondeley, David, 7th Marquess of, 407
Cholmondeley, Sybil, Dowager Marchioness of (née Sassoon), 284, 315–16
Chrissoveloni, Nicky, 232
Christianity: PLF on, 28–9
Churchill, Pamela (later Harriman), 97
Churchill, Randolph, 372
Churchill, Winston, Jr., 97
Claudel, Paul, 53
Cobley, Tom, 186
Cohen, Yvette see Durrell, Yvette Coleman, Brian, 140
Colette: Julie de Carneilhan, 60
Communist Party: in Crete, 328–9
Conner, Angela, 299, 407
Connolly, Cressida (Mrs Charles Hudson), 428
Connolly, Cyril (‘The Humanist’): PLF invokes during stay at Saint-Wandrille, 34; and PLF’s Voodoo article, 36; and E. M. Forster’s Guide to Alexandria, 37; Smart sends essay on existentialism to, 49; newspaper article on Burgess and Maclean, 66; stays with PLF on Hydra, 72, 94; dines with PLF, 136; PLF meets in London, 204; at PLF’s wedding, 260; illness and dea
th, 310; on autobiographical writing, 366; The Rock Pool, 224
Connolly, Deirdre, 260
Constantine, King of the Hellenes, 252–3
Constantine XI Palaiologos, Byzantine Emperor, 72
Contact (magazine), 43
Cooper, Sir Alfred Duff: mistresses, 50n2, 346n8; PLF stays with at Chantilly, 64–8; death, 81; hosts reception at Paris embassy, 372; bookplate, 415
Cooper, Artemis, 351, 413; biography of PLF (Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure), xiv; PLF compares to apple, 90; on PLF’s parody poem, 272n5
Cooper, Lady Diana, 81, 83, 87, 102, 135, 225, 283, 294, 298, 319, 330, 336, 340, 343, 346, 352; PLF stays at Bognor Regis house, xii, 86; friendship and correspondence with PLF, xiii, xviii, 80, 414; borrows yacht from Niarchos, xv, 116, 133; PLF stays with at Chantilly, 64–8, 94; stays on Hydra with PLF, 72, 96, 99; in south of France, 133; visits Kardamyli, 255; holds party in London, 258; at PLF/Joan’s wedding, 260; reports death of Iris Tree, 263; sprains wrist, 283; on Marchioness of Cholmondeley’s affair with Jouvet, 315; Joan visits, 318; PLF collects and returns letters, 336–8; Ziegler’s biography of, 337–8, 352
Coote, Sir Colin, 315
Corfu, 17–19
Cornwall, Camilla, Duchess of (earlier Parker-Bowles), xvi, 418
Crabbet Park, Sussex, 86, 88
Cranborne, Marjorie (‘Mollie’)
Olein Wyndham-Quin, Lady (later Marchioness of Salisbury), 223
Craxton, John (‘Johnny’), 25, 236, 412
Crete: PLF’s wartime activities in, x, 8–9, 311–12; memorial plaque, 328–9; anniversaries of Battle, 349, 421; PLF revisits with Joan, 355–6
Crowe, Miss (of Corfu), 17, 19
Cruddas, Hugh, 208
Csernovits, xenia, 360–1
Culme-Seymour, Angela, 59, 197n3
Curzon, Robert: Visits to Monasteries of the Levant, 397
Cyprus: state of emergency, xvii, 117n2, 119–20, 122, 124–9; Durrell in, 10; British policy in, 17, 99n17, 111; and Enosis (unification with Greece), 111, 119, 122; PLF writes on, 115–16