Corfu, 1946: Paddy spent two weeks there as part of a British Council-sponsored lecture tour. ‘Huddling into the crowded caïque at three in the morning, with you shuddering and waving on the quay in evening dress, and all of us the worse for drink, was the perfect way to leave Corfu after that perfect fortnight,’ he wrote afterwards to his hostess on the island.

Paddy’s pre-war lover, Balasha Cantacuzène.

Paddy in his early twenties, during the time when he and Balasha were together in Rumania.

Paddy in moustache and civilian clothes, southern Crete, May 1943.

Major Leigh Fermor gives a post-war lecture on the operation to abduct General Kreipe.

Brothers-in-arms in Crete and friends ever after: Paddy and Alexander ‘Xan’ Fielding.

A rare shot of Paddy’s lover Joan Rayner, who disliked having her protograph taken (late 1940s).

Astride a mule in the Caribbean, during the winter of 1947–8.

Eye to eye with a Greek goat, aboard a caïque, c.1946.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Paddy retreated to Normandy, for several spells, to concentrate on his writing. His letters to Joan from the monasteries in which he stayed were adapted into a short book, A Time to Keep Silence (1957), beginning a lifelong relationship with the publisher ‘Jock’ Murray. This picture shows Jock in the mid-1970s, at work on the chaotic manuscript of A Time of Gifts.

In bandana and sunhat.

With the painter Niko Ghika, in the studio at Ghika’s house on Hydra, early 1950s.

In the village of Samaria in ‘Cretan runner’ George Psychoundakis and the artist John Craxton are at the centre of the group.

With Eleni, daughter of Paddy’s wartime comrade Manoli Paterakis, at his village, Koustogerako in western Crete, c. 1951. During the war the village was burned by the Germans in reprisal

With Anna Venetia, daughter of Judy Montagu and her husband Milton Gendel, at the house Paddy built in Kardamyli. In his right hand is a coolie hat. The picture was taken in 1969, not long after work on the house was complete.

‘Dirk Bogarde, the actor who is doing one in the film [Ill Met by Moonlight], is absolutely charming–slim, handsome, nice speaking-voice and manner, a super-gent, the ghost of oneself twelve years ago.’

On location in Africa for The Roots of Heaven, Paddy could not resist the temptation to start an affair with the female lead, Juliette Greco.

Lyndall Birch, daughter of Antonia White and Tom Hopkinson. ‘I adored my time in Rome and adored you,’ Paddy wrote to her in Novermber 1958, ‘and greatly miss our secret conclaves.’

‘You are a lovely present to suddenly get, my darling Ricki. . .’ Enrica ‘Ricki’ Huston, the fourth and much younger wife of the film director John Huston, with whom Paddy began an affair in the winter of 1960–1.

Writing under a makeshift shelter in the garden at Kardamyli.

On the terrace at Kardamyli overlooking the sea.

With Ann Fleming at Sevenhampton, en route to a fancy-dress party. Paddy is dressed as the eighteenth-century French poet André Chenier. He is wearing tights borrowed from a parlour-maid.

‘It all went off painlessly, nearly as easy as getting a dog licence. . .’ The Leigh Fermors at Westminster Register Office on their wedding day, 17 January 1968.

‘We had both drunk at the same fountains long before . . .’ In 1972 Paddy was reunited with his old foe, General Kreipe, for a Greek television programme.

Paddy with Rudi Fischer, at Fischer’s flat in Budapest, 2001.

With Lady Diana Cooper in Greece, soon after she was widowed. She and Paddy exchanged long letters until her death in 1986.

‘I’m feeling tremendously buoyant and bucked about the whole In Tearing Haste project . . .’ With Deborah Devonshire at the Old Vicarage in the village of Edensor in 2008, not long after the publication of their correspondence.

In the garden at Kardamyli, December 2001. Note the pebble mosaic.