Paddy and Larry

I’ve been a fan of Patrick Leigh Fermor for many years, after a friend in New York suggested I read the volume of letters between him and Deborah Mitford, In Tearing Haste. I loved it, but I did not know that Paddy had seen a lot of dangerous action on Crete in World War Two and was a decorated hero there. I thought he was ‘only’ a travel writer and perhaps even a traveller before a writer.

The more I learned about Paddy, the more I wanted to know. I have read his account of his time on Crete, and the (even better) book by his partner in crime there, Billy Moss. After the recent Durrells TV series here in the UK, I became interested in Larry Durrell, and I soon realised that his love of Mediterranean islands had led him to cross the path of Paddy. An idea was born.

I wanted to write about Billy and Paddy and their time on Crete, and I hope to do so in the future. However, because both Paddy and Larry were celebrated men of letters before anything else they got up to, there is more evidence of their lives for us interested snoopers to dig around in.

I hope this regular series of articles will one day become a book, but it is the research I love the most. Writing nonfiction is foremost a licence to read a lot, which is what I enjoyed before I decided to write anything, even before my teens.

So, welcome, fellow traveller. I already have some nuggets to share, and more books are on the way!