Between the Woods and the Water

Patrick Leigh Fermor was born in 1915 of English and Irish descent. After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to Constantinople that begins in A Time of Gifts (1977) and continues through Between the Woods and the Water (1986), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. In the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison ofﬁcer in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and OBE. He now lives partly in Greece, in the house he designed with his wife Joan in an olive grove in the Mani, and partly in Worcestershire. He was knighted in 2004 for his services to literature and to British–Greek relations. »

Jan Morris was born in 1926, is Anglo-Welsh, and lives in Wales. She has written some forty books, including the Pax Britannica trilogy about the British Empire, studies of Wales, Spain, Venice, Oxford, Manhattan, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Trieste, six volumes of collected travel essays, two memoirs, two capricious biographies, and a couple of novels—but she defines her entire oeuvre as "disguised autobiography." She is an honorary D.Litt. of the University of Wales and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. »

Between the Woods and the Water

On Foot to Constantinople: From the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates

By Patrick Leigh Fermor
Introduction by Jan Morris

Continuing the epic foot journey across Europe begun in A Time of Gifts

The journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on in 1933—to cross Europe on foot with an emergency allowance of one pound a day—proved so rich in experiences that when much later he sat down to describe them, they overflowed into more than one volume. Undertaken as the storms of war gathered, and providing a background for the events that were beginning to unfold in Central Europe, Leigh Fermor's still-unfinished account of his journey has established itself as a modern classic. Between the Woods and the Water, the second volume of a projected three, has garnered as many prizes as its celebrated predecessor, A Time of Gifts.

The opening of the book finds Leigh Fermor crossing the Danube—at the very moment where his first volume left off. A detour to the luminous splendors of Prague is followed by a trip downriver to Budapest, passage on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania. Remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies, and a variety of sects are all savored in the approach to the Iron Gates, the division between the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans, where, for now, the story ends.

Reviews

The finest traveling companion we could ever have...[Leigh Fermor's] head is stocked with enough cultural lore and poetic fancy to make every league an adventure.
— Christopher Hudson, Evening Standard

Even more magical...through Hungary, its lost province of Transylvania, and into Romania...sampling the tail end of a languid, urbane and anglophile way of life that would soon be swept away forever.
— Jeremy Lewis, Literary Review

Also see:

A Time of Gifts
By Patrick Leigh Fermor
Introduction by Jan Morris

At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.

Mani
By Patrick Leigh Fermor
Introduction by Michael Gorra

Patrick Leigh Fermor carries the reader with him on his journeys amongst the peoples of the southernmost parts of Greece, exploring their history and time-honored lore.

Roumeli
By Patrick Leigh Fermor
Introduction by Patricia Storace

Travel writing's very own "cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene" explores northern Greece.

A Time to Keep Silence
By Patrick Leigh Fermor
Introduction by Karen Armstrong

Patrick Leigh Fermor, considered by many to be the greatest living travel writer, chronicles his sojourns at some of Europe's oldest and most celebrated monasteries in this meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude in modern life.

Format: Paperback
Retail Price: $15.95
Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Oct 3, 2005
280 pages
ISBN: 1590171667
9781590171660
Literature in English
NYRB Classics

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