I should like to thank Patrick Leigh Fermor’s literary executors – Artemis Cooper, Olivia Stewart and Colin Thubron – for asking me to undertake this work. Each has helped me in various ways, and I am extremely grateful to all three of them. I am especially grateful to Artemis Cooper for her assistance throughout. As Paddy’s biographer she knows more about my subject than anyone else alive.
I am also grateful to Artemis for reading the text of this book and providing me with her comments and corrections – as did John Julius Norwich. Since he was the first person to read this book in draft, his enthusiastic comments were particularly encouraging. Two other readers performed this invaluable service for me: Charlotte Mosley, editor of In Tearing Haste, Paddy’s correspondence with Debo Devonshire, answered some detailed queries and provided useful general recommendations; and my old friend Henry Woudhysen provided pages of detailed notes, demonstrating once again that he is not only a fine scholar but also an excellent editor. Colin Thubron and William Blacker read the proofs, and saved me from several blunders. I must state, however, that any mistakes in the book are my sole responsibility.
In compiling a volume of this kind an editor incurs many debts. My hunt for Paddy’s letters has ranged across two continents, and taken me to locations I should otherwise never have seen – a castle perched on a cliff in Tuscany, an apartment overlooking the Tiber in Rome, a romantic Wiltshire garden, the terrace of one of England’s grandest houses; and many other interesting locations. I remember, in particular, a day in a Budapest flat with the late Rudi Fischer and his wife Dagmar, who fortified me throughout with strudel and Transylvanian schnapps (tuica). I also recall lunch at a taverna in Athens where the two of us consumed three carafes of retsina. I am grateful to all those who made me welcome, listed below. I am especially grateful to Myrto Kaouki and Irini Geroulanou of the Benaki Library for allowing me to stay at Paddy’s house at Kardamyli, and to Elpida Beloyannis for making my stay so comfortable.
I want to thank the following individuals for supplying me with letters: William Blacker, Hugh and Gabriella Bullock, Max Egremont, Dagmar von Errfa, the late Rudi Fischer, Denise Harvey, Philippa Jellicoe, George Katsimbalis Jr., John Julius Norwich, Janetta Parladé, David Pryce-Jones, Avi Sharon, Ann Shukman and Petros Tzannetakis. A private collector in Scotland allowed me to transcribe a manuscript letter to Harold Nicolson in his possession. Lyndall Passerini-Hopkinson (Lyndall Birch) patiently answered my queries about Paddy’s letters to her. Dr Christine Kenyon Jones kindly gave me advice on Byron’s portraits.
I am grateful to Ioanna Providi, former archivist at the Ghika Gallery in Athens and editor of a forthcoming volume of correspondence between Paddy and Niko Ghika, for showing me a selection of letters from the work, and for allowing me to print three of them in this book; and to her successor Ioanna Moraiti for facilitating this. I am grateful also to Anna Londou, stepdaughter of George Seferis, and to Professor Fotios Dimitrakopoulos and Vassiliki D. Lambropoulou, editors of a volume of correspondence between Paddy, Joan and Seferis published in 2007 by the Cyprus Research Centre, for permission to publish two letters from that volume.
I particularly want to thank David McClay and his colleagues at the National Library of Scotland, where Paddy’s archive is kept, as part of the John Murray archive. David exudes energy and enthusiasm, and has been exceptionally helpful to me in all sorts of ways. I should like to acknowledge the work of David’s colleague Graham Stewart, who compiled the inventory of Paddy’s archive; and Simon Fenwick, who did much of the initial sorting and sifting. I should also like to thank the following archivists and archives for supplying me with copies of Paddy’s letters and giving me permission to publish them: John Frederick and the Special Collections and University Archives of the McPherson Library of the University of Victoria, for access to the papers of John Betjeman; the Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, for access to the Lawrence Durrell Papers; the estate of Enrica Soma Huston; Gayle Richardson of the Huntington Library in California for access to Patrick Kinross’s papers; Helen Marchant, James Towe and the Mitford Archive at Chatsworth for access to the papers of the late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and her sister Nancy Mitford; the Rare Books and Special Collections of Princeton University Library, for access to the papers of Raymond Mortimer; Peter Monteith and the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge, for access to the papers of Frances Partridge and ‘Dadie’ Rylands; and Elizabeth L. Garver of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, for access to the papers of Freya Stark.
I want to extend special thanks to John and Virginia Murray for their hospitality at the John Murray building in Albemarle Street during the days when I was there. It seemed appropriate to be reading Paddy’s letters to John’s father in the very room where Paddy himself had often laboured on his own manuscripts. If I needed inspiration, his portrait by Derek Hill hung on the staircase outside.
I am much indebted to Peter Mackridge, Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at Oxford, who translated all Paddy’s Greek and provided me with transcriptions.
I also want to thank Ceri Evans for her stalwart help with the transcription. Much of what she typed might as well have been written in Rumanian in that it was so far from her own experience, but she did an excellent job all the same.
I should like to thank Roland Philipps for his calm editorial guidance; Caroline Westmore for her assured and skilful handling of the mechanics of turning the typescript into a printed book; Juliet Brightmore for expert picture research; Hilary Hammond for copy-editing and making helpful suggestions; Jane Birkett for proofreading; and my old friend Douglas Matthews, for compiling the index. I also wish to thank my agent, Andrew Wylie, and Tracy Bohan of the Wylie Agency, for their steadfast support.