These adventures show that his daring only increased in the following decades and made me want to read the next volume as well as his later work. The experiences of his later years inform the writing and sometimes intrude into the story. The book was written in the 1970s, using his contemporaneous journals and his memories as source material. He also provides vivid descriptions of the wintry landscapes. He explores the language, folkways, and society of the various peoples he encounters. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to. I enjoyed the book, especially his observations of the people he met along the way. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. An introduction brings the reader up to the point of his departure, and the story of the journey continues in another volume.

The memoir is, in general, written chronologically. This first volume details his trip from London to his crossing of the Danube at the border of Czechoslovakia with Hungary. This memoir seemed like a good balance to the novels because I hoped to get glimpses of people from the lower and middle classes.įermor decided at the young age of 18 to walk across the continent, from Rotterdam to Constantinople.

The Lanny Budd books center the wealthy and focus on 'high' society.

'Not only is this journey one of physical adventure but of cultural awakening.While reading Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd series, I heard about Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel memoirs on the NYT Book Review podcast and planned to read this book when I reached the same time period in the Sinclair series. Hailed as a masterpiece, A Time of Gifts is in part a coming-of-age memoir, but it is also a rich and compelling portrait of a continent that - despite its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers and grand cities - was soon to be swept away by war, modernisation and profound social change. Three decades later he wrote A Time of Gifts, the sparklingly original account of the first part of this youthful adventure, which took him through the Low Countries, up the Rhine, through Germany, down the Danube, through Austria and Czechoslovakia, and as far as Hungary.Īlone, carrying only a rucksack and with a small allowance of only a pound a week, Fermor had planned to sleep rough - to live 'like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar' - but a chance introduction in Bavaria led to comfortable stays in castles, and provided a glimpse of the old Europe of princes and peasants. 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. 'The feeling of being lost in time and geography with months and years hazily sparkling ahead is a prospect of inconjecturable magic.' ' gloriously ornate account of that epic journey is a classic' ROBERT MACFARLANE Paperback On Foot to Constantinople: from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

A time of gifts author