A Time of Gifts
On Foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube
$25.74
- Paperback
384 pages
- Release Date
26 October 2026
Summary
WITH A FOREWORD BY JAN MORRIS
‘A treasure chest’ - *Spectator*
‘A masterpiece’ - William Dalrymple, *Financial Times*
In 1933, aged eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on his ‘great trudge’, a year-long journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Three decades later he wrote A Time of Gifts, the sparklingly original account of the first part of this youthful adventure. Alone, carrying only a rucks…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781399836852 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1399836854 |
| Author: | Patrick Leigh Fermor |
| Publisher: | John Murray Press |
| Imprint: | John Murray Publishers Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 384 |
| Release Date: | 26 October 2026 |
| Dimensions: | 198mm x 129mm |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
[Fermor’s] gloriously ornate account of that epic journey is a classic of what we might call the ‘literature of the leg’ * Robert Macfarlane, Waitrose Weekend *
About The Author
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) embarked on a remarkable journey across Europe in December 1933, at the age of eighteen, arriving in Constantinople in early 1935. His travels continued into Greece, where he met Balasha Cantacuzene in Athens. They lived together, primarily in Rumania, until the outbreak of the Second World War.
During the war, Fermor served in occupied Crete, where he led a daring operation to kidnap a German general. This action earned him the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and led to him being described by the BBC as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.”
Following the war, Fermor turned his attention to writing and explored Greece extensively with Joan Eyres Monsell, whom he later married. Near the end of his life, he penned the first two volumes of his memoirs detailing his early trans-European odyssey: A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. A planned third volume, unfinished at the time of his death in 2011, was later edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper and published posthumously as The Broken Road.
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