Patrick Leigh Fermor widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest travel writers. Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE (1915–2011) was a British author, scholar and soldier. A BBC journalist once described him as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.” He played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. For a year and a half Leigh Fermor, disguised as a Cretan shepherd endured a perilous existence, living in freezing mountain caves while spying on German troops. In April of 1944, dressed as German police corporal, he stopped the car belonging to General Karl Kreipe, the island’s commander. The chauffeur disposed of, Leigh Fermor donned the general’s hat and, with his accomplice Moss driving the car, they bluffed their way through 22 checkpoints. The General meanwhile, was hidden under the back seat. For three weeks the group evaded German search parties. Hunted by German patrols, the group moved across the mountains to reach the southern side of the island, where a British Motor Launch was to pick them up. Eventually, on 14 May 1944, they were picked up and transferred to Egypt with their prisioner. Patrick Leigh Fermor was awarded a military OBE in 1943 and was appointed a Companion of Literature in 1991. He received a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List, 2004.

Fermor  lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani. Roumeli is not to be found on present-day maps. It is the name once given to northern Greece—stretching from the Bosporus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth, a name that evokes a world where the present is inseparably bound up with the past. His books His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. Celebrated not only for his books but for his wartime exploits, He is, perhaps, the last of a breed of writer-travelers whose reputation has an aura of genuine action and courage.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. First edition stated. Wear to dust jacket that shows sunning to spine edge. Some edge wear to blue cloth boards, otherwise with interior clean and binding sound. Scarce! Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Roumeli takes the reader among Sarakatsan shepherds, the monasteries of Meteora and the villages of Krakora. Roumeli is not on modern maps: it is the ancient name for the lands from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth.

Bookseller Inventory# 28626

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Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece
Fermor, Patrick Leigh

Publisher: Harper & Row, Publishers, New York
Publication Date: 1966
Edition:First U.S. Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·