"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE (11 February 1915 – 10 June 2011), also known as Paddy Fermor, was a British author, scholar and soldier who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during the Second World War. He was widely regarded as Britain's greatest living travel writer during his lifetime, based on books such as A Time of Gifts (1977). A BBC journalist once described Fermor (in perhaps the most flattering terms one can hope for) as "a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene."
Fermor had a long and decorated career, winning awards such as: the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature for The Traveller's Tree (1950), the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers.
(2004), and was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1991. The Patrick Leigh Fermor Society was formed in 2014.
See below our stock of Patrick Leigh Fermor First Editions and signed copies.
London: John Murray, 1986. [European Travel] SIGNED FIRST EDITION, an advance or review copy with errata slip. Octavo (23 x 15cm), pp.[2] 248 [2]. With a map printed on turquoise paper. SIGNED by the author in blue ink to title page. With a printed errata slip loose to preliminaries. Publisher's..... More
London: John Murray and Andre Deutsch, 1977. [Modern fiction] FOURTH IMPRESSION. Octavo (23 x 15cm), pp.139;[1]. Publisher's green cloth with gilt titles to spine, endpapers illustrated with maps, pictorial dust-wrapper price clipped. Inscription of owner's name to front flypaper. Spotting to textblock top edge, slight wear to spine edges, minor..... More
New York: Viking 1938 [actually December 1937]. PRIVATE PRE-PUBLICATION EDITION, number 6 of just 65 copies. Octavo, pp.315; [3], blank. Near fine in original linen-backed silk boards featuring rather striking gold orange and yellow vertical stripes, in accompanying gold card slip-case (rubbed). Translated by Patrick Leigh Fermor. This rare edition..... More