A Time of Gifts

"Yes, that’s a similarity with Laurie Lee. But Lee was a rural lad, brought up in virtual poverty. Leigh Fermor was from an upper-middle-class background. He had letters of introduction to some of the finest aristocratic houses in Europe. His is an interesting take on Europe on the eve of the disruption of World War Two . Reading these books now is like reading history—this is how Europe was pre-1939. The final book in the trilogy, The Broken Road , was completed after he died by his biographer Artemis Cooper. It’s a very different book, a far more reflective book, about an older man recalling his more youthful self—which the previous books don’t have, because they were written earlier. The first two, interestingly, were written from memory, because his diary was stolen with his backpack from a hostel he was staying in. So they were recreated from memory, whereas the diary was returned to him later and The Broken Road was recreated from that diary. Does that make it a better book than the earlier two? I don’t know. The books go together well. A Time of Gifts is like a Beaujolais Nouveau—very youthful and fresh. The last book is like an aged Burgundy— deepened, more reflective, and profound. Through those three books, we see someone’s life journey, from a young man to an old man; we see him evolve. He died at the age of 96. Yes, unless you cheat and take buses, you just have to take what comes. You encounter people from all different walks of life, who you wouldn’t do otherwise. I found this on my own walking journey; you place yourself at the mercy of people, rely on the kindness of strangers. That puts you in a vulnerable situation—you are vulnerable, particularly traveling on your own. But that means that you are opening yourself to encounters, and you get much more out of it in terms of material as a writer."

"This is the first volume of his journey in 1933-34 from the Hook of Holland, as he called it, to what he insisted on calling Constantinople (Istanbul). It was to be in three volumes. This one takes him beyond Vienna. The second volume, Between the Woods and the Water , takes him through Hungary to the Balkans. The third volume was going to get him across Romania to Istanbul, but he never wrote it. There is a very modified version of it, which will probably be published – people are so longing to see this third volume that even an outline of it will suffice. But it’s not finished by his standards, which were very exacting. Like many people, I love the idea of this young 19-year-old gypsy going off on foot on his own, with just a pound a week, footloose and fancy free, full of delight at the world and fascination at where he’s going. That’s one of the lovely things about the book. It’s beautifully written, very rich prose. Have you read it? It’s model was Norman Douglas – rich in language, vocabulary, scholarship. It’s rather an acquired taste, and may seem to a younger generation old-fashioned. Good, because I know younger people may find the writing a bit much. I love the delight in everything, with all its byways in history or folklore, and the people he meets are so marvellously and generously described. He had such a big heart, a generous spirit. You feel he must have been a delightful companion for anyone to meet on the road. Some people find it a little bit showy-offy, because of all of the stuff he quotes as having by heart – but he did, it’s perfectly true. He had an excellent memory, and into his old age he was a great raconteur. Yes, he died about a month ago. Well, he was what you would expect. In some ways, he was rather an innocent. He wasn’t an intellectual, but he loved facts and data and history and architecture. He also loved show, and a good story. He was a delightful companion, very funny, and he was a bit original. He would sometimes say something rather fanciful, he had a marvellous imagination. But there was this innocence about him. It’s as if he was in a time warp, and in rejoining his youth in these two books he was rejoining somebody he still was, in a sense, his sensibility was so young. He hadn’t changed in many ways, he hadn’t been disillusioned. They are very “illusioned” books, if you like. It’s a very wonderful idea to go back to who he was, because he could so easily enter into the spirit of that liberated delight in the world which he kept with him always. He was very frail when he died, but he still kept that with him. Well, the problem of memory is horrific. He had notebooks, but they were stolen, so he had notes for some of the journey but not all of it. Of course it’s possible to revisit and reimagine, but I don’t know that he did that for A Time of Gifts . I know he did it when he was trying to write the third book, but it was a disaster because it was Eastern Europe and had changed so much. So it was an extraordinary feat of memory. Yes, he had stayed with a painter called Balasha Cantacuzene, an older woman in Romania whom he’d fallen in love with. He was with her until the outbreak of World War II. And the notebooks he had then were returned to him after the war – I think she kept them. Amazing fluke. But those notebooks for the beginning of A Time of Gifts were stolen, lost forever. And in some ways the book is more free-flowing for it, because he was less tied down to them, going more on memory and general sweep. I don’t know really. It’s supposed to broaden the mind. If I look at the travel writers I know and have known, there’s a certain breadth of knowledge. One would hope there’s a breadth of understanding or of sympathy too. In my own case, it’s very hard to say what it’s done to me. Of course, it makes you a sort of amateur. You’re a free agent, you’re the oddball. One can understand why dictators find travellers a threat – you’re not beholden to anyone and you’re doing what you want, which is a marvellous privilege. But what it does to you character-wise, I don’t know. “For now the time of gifts is gone / O boys that grow, O snows that melt.” Yes it does. This was his great extended epiphany, to be suddenly going out travelling. That was the time of gifts for him, when the world opened to him. He was obviously ready for it. He was always on the wrong side of authority in England, and he was expelled from school. He got into a rather posh artist society in London – people like Robert Byron – and he was enormously entertaining and fun, and very handsome as a young man. But he hadn’t travelled anywhere. So suddenly to loose yourself on the world was surely his time of gifts. Nothing of that kind. Paddy’s Horace was stolen, along with his notebooks.I don’t take anything in my luggage which is not absolutely useful, because it’s just a little rucksack and I shrivel it down to the minimal. The only book I invariably take is a language manual for the country I’m in – so if I’m stuck in a hole I can always brush up on my language. I’ve struggled with Mandarin and Russian for half my life. It is solved by walking."