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Patrick Leigh Fermor: paddy power
Dominic Green leads a tour travelling in the footsteps of the accomplished writer, scholar and soldier Patrick Leigh Fermor around Southern Greece.
The abduction in April 1944 by British SOE agents and Cretan partisans of the German commander in Crete, Heinrich von Kriepe, was one of the most daring feats of the Second World War. It also produced a moment in which Classical erudition reminded two combatants of their common heritage amid a conflict that was destroying civilisation.
As the kidnap party paused on the slopes of Mount Ida its leader, Major Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011), heard Kriepe mumble: ‘Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte.’ Leigh Fermor recognised the opening line of Horace’s ode Ad Thaliarchum – ‘See how Soracte stands white with snow on high.’ Having translated the ode as a schoolboy, he picked
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