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A review by quaerentia
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper
5.0
What a man!
PLF was an extraordinary man living in a privileged world who seemed to know anyone who was anyone. His sparkling wit, bonhomie and handsome nonchalance meant that he was never short of friends (or lovers, for that matter).
He was a polymath war hero who in his teenage years had looked as though he would never amount to much. But his hunger and curiosity to get to know his world opened the eyes of generations to what was around them, through his captivating and glorious prose (and occasional verse).
Artemis Cooper does a wonderful job of capturing the impossible. We almost know him. We almost certainly wish we had. She writes with palpable affection but doesn't shy away from the darker corners. Paddy inhabited what was clearly the bohemian end of the British establishment spectrum but he seems to have been embraced by all of it (despite living in southern Greece most of his adult life). No wonder he was knighted towards the end of his life.
But Cooper's greatest achievement on top of all this is to make us long to get stuck into those great books. Leigh Fermor has always seemed special to me ever since my grandmother urged me to read him as a teenager. I'm now raring to get back to rekindle that excitement - not just Paddy's as he walked across 1930s Europe, but mine as I retraced his steps in my mind's eye.
PLF was an extraordinary man living in a privileged world who seemed to know anyone who was anyone. His sparkling wit, bonhomie and handsome nonchalance meant that he was never short of friends (or lovers, for that matter).
He was a polymath war hero who in his teenage years had looked as though he would never amount to much. But his hunger and curiosity to get to know his world opened the eyes of generations to what was around them, through his captivating and glorious prose (and occasional verse).
Artemis Cooper does a wonderful job of capturing the impossible. We almost know him. We almost certainly wish we had. She writes with palpable affection but doesn't shy away from the darker corners. Paddy inhabited what was clearly the bohemian end of the British establishment spectrum but he seems to have been embraced by all of it (despite living in southern Greece most of his adult life). No wonder he was knighted towards the end of his life.
But Cooper's greatest achievement on top of all this is to make us long to get stuck into those great books. Leigh Fermor has always seemed special to me ever since my grandmother urged me to read him as a teenager. I'm now raring to get back to rekindle that excitement - not just Paddy's as he walked across 1930s Europe, but mine as I retraced his steps in my mind's eye.