Dashing for the Post: the Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor
Edited by Adam Sisman, John Murray, £30
The age of letter-writing is over. Few now enjoy or endure what Patrick Leigh Fermor calls “the agony of waiting for letters, and, when they arrive, the sudden bomb-like detonation of delight”.
“Paddy” lived a seemingly charmed life of adoring, and being adored by, a wide circle of friends and lovers. He wrote in torrents of affection to them from all of his natural habitats, whether a fishing village in Greece, the library of a country house the day after a riotous party, or a cell in an ancient monastery where he sometimes retired to in order to write.
