by Deborah Devonshire
I am told Paddy was born in 1915. Not possible! Hardly a grey hair, upright, trudging for miles up and down dale, or swimming for hours according to whether he is in England or in Greece, he is adored by my youngest grandchild as well as by his own generation; an ageless, timeless hero to us all.
I first saw him at a fancy-dress party in London. He was a Roman gladiator armed with a net and trident, and his get-up suited him very well. I had heard of him, of course. Everyone had. By 1957, the story of his exploits in occupied Crete had been made into the film Ill Met by Moonlight with Dirk Bogarde as Paddy. It is still shown on television from time to time.
It was in 1942 and ’43, living so closely to them in shared danger, that he became deeply devoted to the Cretans, and the bond between him and his old comrades is as strong as ever.
For eighteen months, Paddy and his great friend Xan Fielding lived in the mountains of Crete disguised as shepherds (I wouldn’t put him in charge of my sheep, but never mind) and in constant danger of being caught by the enemy. Then came the spectacular coup in 1944 when he and Billy Moss, an officer in the Coldstream Guards, kidnapped the German general, Heinrich Kreipe.
Their prize was bundled into the back of the German official car: Moss drove them through a town in the blackout, Paddy sitting on the front seat wearing the general’s cap, in case anyone should glance at the occupants. After a four-hour climb on foot to the comparative safety of a cave in the mountains, they spent eighteen days together, moving from one hiding place to another and sharing the only blanket during the freezing nights. When the sun rose on the first morning and lit up the snow on the summit of Mount Ida, the general gazed at the scene and quoted a verse of an ode by Horace. His captor completed the next six stanzas. Such a duet under such circumstances must be unique in the history of war.
When he was sixteen and a half, Paddy was expelled from The King’s School, Canterbury, for holding hands with the greengrocer’s daughter, sitting on a crate of veg. What to do next? A military crammer was tried but didn’t seem to suit, so he mooned around London, making friends who lasted a lifetime. At the age of eighteen (‘and three-quarters’, he says, for accuracy) he yearned to go to Greece. He could not afford the fare so he walked there. What a lesson to young people now, who write to strangers asking for money to enable them to travel.
Years later, his walk inspired A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, perhaps the two most acclaimed of all his books, winners of endless literary prizes and translated into more languages than probably even Paddy knows. His love of Greece prompted him and his wife Joan to build their glorious house on the sea in the Mani, living in a tent and working with the masons till it grew into the idyllic home it now is.
He is one of those rare birds who is exactly the same with whoever he is talking to. Children recognise him as a kindred spirit. With his formidable scholarship and prodigious memory, he is just as able to spout Edward Lear or ‘There was an Old Woman as I’ve heard tell, who went to market her eggs for to sell’ for them, as Marvell or Shakespeare, via Noël Coward, for grown-ups.
Try to get him to sing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ in Hindustani with his Italian translations of ‘John Peel’ and ‘Widdecombe Fair’. John Peel’s hounds – Ruby, Ranter, Ringwood, Bellman and True – turn into Rubino, Vantardo, Rondo Bosco, Campanelli and Fedele.
Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse
Lend me your grey mare,
All along, down along, out along lee,
becomes:
Tommaso prestami tua grigia giumenta
Tutti lungo, fuori lungo, giù lungo prato.
Guglielmo Brewer, Jacopo Stewer, Pietro Gurney,
Pietro Davey, Daniele Whiddon ed Enrico ’awke.
Ed il vecchio zio Tommaso Cobley e tutti quanti etc.
Or get him to recite the longest palindrome, ‘Live dirt up a side track carted is a putrid evil’, delivered, for some unknown reason, in the broadest Gloucestershire accent. Just the entertainment for a winter’s night.
Handsome, funny, energetic and original, Paddy is a brilliant, shining star – how lucky my family and I are to have had such a friend for so long.
Adapted from an article written for PLF’s eighty-fifth birthday, Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2000.