Patrick Leigh Fermor's walk as a young adventure remembered

Patrick Leigh Fermor's walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in A Time of Gifts is a 1977 travel book by British author Patrick Leigh Fermor, published by John Murray when the author was 62. It is a memoir of the first part of Leigh Fermor's journey on foot across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (officially Istanbul) in 1933/34.

2 articles, 1 book · about 5 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   Patrick Leigh Fermor's walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in A Time of Gifts · Wikipedia · 2 min read

   In A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor used a diary of the Danubian leg of his journey, found in a castle in Romania many years after his travel and returned to him. The book also drew on the knowledge he had accumulated in the intervening years. For Patrick Leigh Fermor's walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in A Time of Gifts, The Economist described the book in 2024 as "arguably the greatest travel narrative ever written."

2. Read
   

   Book Review - A time of gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor · aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com · 3 min read

   Patrick Leigh Fermor began writing A Time of Gifts well into adulthood, after heroic wartime service earned him the DSO and after he had published two books of his later travels in Greece. The book's elegiac tone looks back on his walk as a great adventure in his youth, before adult life corrupted and dragged him down.

3. Book
   

   A Time of Gifts · Bookshop.org

   A Time of Gifts is Patrick Leigh Fermor's memoir of the first part of his 1933/34 walk across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople; an author's description notes that his diary of the Danubian leg was found in a castle many years later and returned to him.

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