Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1915–2011

“To change scenery; abandon London and England and set out across Europe like a tramp—or, as I characteristically phrased it to myself, like a pilgrim or a palmer, an errant scholar, a broken knight or the hero of The Cloister and the Hearth! All of a sudden, this was not merely the obvious, but the only thing to do. I would travel on foot, sleep in hayricks in summer, shelter in barns when it was raining or snowing and only consort with peasants and tramps. If I lived on bread and cheese and apples, jogging along on fifty pounds a year like Lord Durham with a few noughts knocked off, there would even be some cash left over for paper and pencils and an occasional mug of beer. A new life! Freedom! Something to write about!”

Patrick Leigh Fermor, writing in A Time of Gifts about the genesis of his journey by foot (undertaken when he was 18 years old) from Holland to Constantinople.

A website about Patrick Leigh Fermor (or Paddy, or PLF) has a roundup of obituary coverage, and has put up a tribute page, on which readers are invited to comment.