A Time of Gifts

1977 travel book by Patrick Leigh Fermor

First edition with artwork by John Craxton

A Time of Gifts (1977) is a travel book by British author Patrick Leigh Fermor. Published by John Murray when the author was 62, it is a memoir of the first part of Leigh Fermor's journey on foot across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (officially Istanbul) in 1933/34.

A Time of Gifts, whose introduction is a letter to his wartime colleague Xan Fielding, recounts Leigh Fermor's journey as far as the Middle Danube. A second volume, Between the Woods and the Water (1986), begins with the author crossing the Mária Valéria bridge from Czechoslovakia into Hungary and ends when he reaches the Iron Gate, where the Danube formed the boundary between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Romania. The final volume, The Broken Road, completes his journey to Constantinople; drawing from his diary and a draft that he wrote in the 1960s,[1] it was edited by Artemis Cooper and published in 2013.[2]

## Description

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Many years after his travel, Leigh Fermor's diary of the Danubian leg of his journey was found in a castle in Romania and returned to him.[3] He used it in his writing of the book, which also drew on the knowledge he had accumulated in the intervening years.

In the book, he conveys the immediacy of an 18-year-old's reactions to a great adventure, deepened by the retrospective reflections of the cultured and sophisticated man of the world which he became. He travelled in Europe when old monarchies survived in the Balkans, and remnants of the ancien régimes were to be seen in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In Germany Hitler had recently come to power but most of his atrocities were not yet evident.

The title comes from "Twelfth Night", a poem by Louis MacNeice.[4]

## Reception

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The book has been hailed as a classic of travel writing.[5] William Dalrymple called it a "sublime masterpiece".[6] In 2024, The Economist described it as "arguably the greatest travel narrative ever written."[7]

## Honours

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* 1978: WH Smith Literary Award

## References

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1. ^ "Patrick Leigh Fermor's final volume will be published" The Guardian 20 December 2011
2. ^ Fermor, Patrick Leigh (25 April 2019). The Broken Road. ISBN 9781848547537.
3. ^ Between the Woods and the Water p. 59 "a thick green manuscript book bought in Bratislava and used as a notebook and journal"
4. ^ "Twelfth Night by Louis MacNeice". Patrick Leigh Fermor. 5 January 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
5. ^ Beattie, Andrew (2010). The Danube: A Cultural History. Oxford UP. pp. 254–. ISBN 9780199768356.
6. ^ O'Reilly, James; Habegger, Larry; O'Reilly, Sean (2010). The Best Travel Writing 2010: True Stories from Around the World. Travelers' Tales. p. 17\. ISBN 9781932361735.
7. ^ "We enjoyed reading these books on holiday. You might, too". The Economist. 2 August 2024. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 14 August 2024.