Many of you will have had a lot of enjoyment reading Michael O’Sullivan’s excellent book Patrick Leigh Fermor: Noble Encounters between Budapest and Transylvania which was published in the summer. A happy Easter to you all wherever you are and however much space in which you have to move around; I hope that you remain well.

A repository of many of his letters, books, postcards and other miscellaneous writings can be found within the Patrick Leigh Fermor Archive at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Leigh Fermor was born in London, the son of Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (Eileen), daughter of Charles Taafe Ambler.A planned third volume of Leigh Fermor's journey from the Iron Gate to Constantinople was never completed in the author's lifetime but was issued posthumously as THE BROKEN ROAD in 2013. Each of them is tiered with burnished leather bindings and gold and scarlet gleam on the spines of hazel and chestnut and pale vellum. Born under the Empire, Yiankos lived in Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Greece, surviving two nationalities, seven homes and 13 professions, all imposed by “the gale of the world”. that followed the Second World War in Eastern Europe; a criticism of communism (still present at the time of the book’s writing) forms the ‘elephant in the room’ of his narrative. Let’s start our quest where he did; on the west bank of the river Danube on the Buda side of the city so elegantly bisected by one of Europe’s greatest rivers.

Opposite Gerbeaud is the former Teleki Palace (now the Bank of China) where Leigh Fermor made several visits to one of Hungary’s most learned Prime Ministers, Paul Teleki, who was on the team of geographers who mapped the Japanese archipelago. His backpack was evidently stuffed to the brim, with a greatcoat, jerseys, shirts (including white linen ones for dressy occasions), puttees, nailed boots, a selection of stationery, a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse and the first volume of the Loeb Horace. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come.There, in his book-lined rooms, he was regularly sought out by historians such as Norman Stone or by those who were simply curious to know about a man who had survived the vicissitudes of communism without bitterness.

Regular correspondent Brent McCunn sent me this a little while ago, which is the first post of 2021, a year which will mark the tenth anniversary of Paddy’s death. On leaving Cambridge, Pálffy was at a slight loss as to how he might use a degree in Moral Sciences. The Fisherman’s Bastion has all the deceptive appearance of an ancient cut-stone belvedere; however, this amalgam of neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque architecture was erected barely 30 years before Leigh Fermor reached Budapest. Filled with dim early morning light, the concavity of grey masonry and whitewash joined in pointed arches high overhead and the floor diminished along the nave in a chessboard of black and white flagstones.We read of raucous games of bicycle polo on the lawns of castles, of horses borrowed for a few days’ ride across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a seemingly endless succession of benevolent Anglophiles who welcomed the dusty young traveller with food, alcohol and the free run of their libraries. By the time he reached Mitteleuropa proper, Leigh Fermor had become the darling of the fading imperial aristocracy. From this hospitable house he explored Budapest in a way that few English travellers had achieved at that time. But the delight remains in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges.

The concerted spin of a score of barley-sugar pillars uphold elliptic galleries where brass combines with polished oak, and obelisks and pineapples alternate on the balustrades. Back in Romania, they enjoyed “party-time”– the annees folles of the 1920s – until the Crash of 1929. Leigh Fermor opened his home in Kardamyli to the local villagers on his saint's day, which was 8 November, the feast of Michael (he had assumed the name Michael while fighting with the Greek resistance). He was later expelled from The King's School, Canterbury after he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter. It lends narrative power to the images of lost Europe that he constructs, for Leigh Fermor has experienced this past and can contrast it with the narrative present.If you are fascinated by this part of the world and tales of people who come through trial after trial, you will want to snap it up.