Patrick, Sir Patrick, Leigh Fermor is a much admired 20th century literary idol.
Many years ago I read with reverence his account of his “great tramp” as he called it from Hook of Holland to Constantinople on foot, mostly, in 1933. Now I am a heretic. I have just read Mani and the best part is the cover by John Craxton. It is purportedly about a journey he made with Joan whom he subsequently married. It would be a short book if he only described the expedition and it would be the better for it. Unfortunately he pads it out to more than three hundred pages with long digressions and flights of fancy. Towards the end he is reduced to describing Greek cats for four pages. Of course the history of the Maniots is of immense interest but I’d like it to be more concise. The Sunday Times was more charitable: “An extraordinary book of adventure and encounter, fantasy and learning, observation and experience”. Note there’s no mention of it being a travel book. To be fair I do know more about the Mani now and I did read the whole book with only occasional skips; perhaps I have been a bit harsh.
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The energy bill at No 56 is almost the national average and forecast to go up another 50% in the autumn. Government ministers talk blithely about there being headroom, the new buzz word, to increase spending or cut taxes. Most households have headroom to save or spend, or both. This winter they will not and I envisage consumer spending collapsing. Restaurants, clothing, holidays are all discretionary spends and will be worst affected; shares in these sectors will suffer accordingly. We are in for a rough ride in the UK.
At university in the early 1980s it was de rigeur to be seen clutching either A Time of Gifts, or Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude. Whilst Fermor’s descriptions of pre-war Germany were fascinating – and chilling in places – the padding became too much in the end. His description of the Ulm Minster seemed to go on for decades, and the veiled and euphemistic references to getting his leg over at various Schlösser en route were especially tiresome. Overrated.