It happens to me from time to time that an author gets lodged in my mind and then fate conspires to insure that he remains freshly there by regular reappearances- such a one is the above Anglo-Irish travel writer ; Patrick Leigh Fermor.

But before I write about him I want to write about something completely different.

In the seventies I worked for and became great friends with Michael Waterfield : Michael had at that time very recently been involved in bringing up to date his great aunt, Janet Ross’s, classic Italian Cook book “Leaves from a Tuscan Cookbook” . The Waterfield family had strong roots in Tuscany and at that time owned a castle there.
Michael’s aunt, Kinta Beevor, has written a wonderful evocative story of growing up in that castle called “A Tuscan Childhood”. From reading this book I became interested in the writings of her son ; Anthony Beevor who has written some marvellous accounts of modern European history, and then in turn in the writings of his wife, Artemis Cooper (daughter of another favourite travel writer John Julius Norwich). Ms Cooper afterwards went on to write the definitive biography of my personal doyenne of food writers ; Elizabeth David.

The first time I ever heard Leigh- Fermor mentioned was by the same cookery writer.

In French Provincial Cooking Mrs. David gives a recipe for a melon ice cream which she christens;
Glaçe au Melon de L’Île St. Jacques.
The melon ice has a strange, almost magical flavour and that is why I have called it after that French Caribbean island so unforgettably conjured out of the ocean, only to be once more submerged, by Patrick Leigh Fermor in The Violins of St. Jacques
Heady stuff from ED!
When asked last March to give a talk about food writing at Waterford Writers Weekend I used this quotation to demonstrate why I found good prose writing about food much more inspiring than photographs.

About five years ago friend Petra thrust a book into my hand and said “Take this Martin, I didn’t like it very much but I thought you might”
She was quite right.
The book was “Words of Mercury” by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and was really a compendium of his travel writing.
This I found a most compelling read and at the time on my blog quoted in full his description of Costas dance in a piece called a ”A Cave in the Black Sea”
Shortly after that I came across a piece he wrote for the Architectural Digest in 1986 about building his house in Greece.
He starts the piece with the following words:

“Where a man’s Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, there shall his heart be also”

Having been lucky enough to inherit exactly that edition of those volumes from my parents, and having brought them down to Languedoc and deposited them in our house there some years ago I feel I understand exactly what he is saying.

Then just last April we had a visit from a distinguished intellectual Scotsman who was on a cycling tour of the area.
He, having had a pleasant dinner on our terrace and having very much enjoyed the conversation, wrote to thank me afterwards with a quotation from Horace via PLF.
“Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte”

This of course sent me scurrying into all sorts of research, there I discovered it refers to a moment in PLF’s life when, while working for the Greek resistance on the Isle of Crete, he found it impossible to harm his captured German Captain who quoted this bit of Horace because as he said “We have all drunk from the same fountain”.

But I am not finished with Mr. Leigh Fermor quite yet.

I have just heard that my friends Petra and Finola are going to attend a special day on his writings at Lismore Travel Writers Festival.
Attending will be the lady who is presently involved in writing his biography, one Artemis Cooper.