A review by hcastle
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

5.0

Patrick Leigh Fermor is always in good company. With friends such as 'Debo' & Diana Cooper. Up until his middle years, he lived off his charm, penniless, the constant house guest, shifting around Europe. Even Artemis Cooper, his biographer, is pedigree: wife of Anthony Beevor, daughter of John Julius Norwich & granddaughter of Diana Cooper. She provides a great narrative - his long walk across Europe, years in Rumania & war years in Crete - which is not stifled by her rigorous research. She tells it CRABS & all. He might have been a great dinner party guest, but not so terrific if you were his partner or his editor. He delivered manuscripts years late, several times over the word count, as handwritten scribblings.