Time of Gifts: A John Murray Journey

A Time of Gifts is a 1933 memoir by Patrick Leigh Fermor, detailing his year-long journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. The book was hailed as a masterpiece and a rich and compelling portrait of a continent that was soon to be swept away by war, modernization, and social change.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 08 July 2021
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division

INTRODUCED BY JAN MORRIS

This gloriously ornate account of that epic journey is a classic.

ROBERT MACFARLANE

The feeling of being lost in time and geography with months and years hazily sparkling ahead is a prospect of inconjecturable magic.

In 1933, aged eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on his great trudge, a year-long journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul.

Three decades later, he wrote A Time of Gifts, the sparklingly original account of the first part of this youthful adventure, which took him through the Low Countries, up the Rhine, through Germany, down the Danube, through Austria and Czechoslovakia, and as far as Hungary.

Alone, carrying only a rucksack and with a small allowance of only a pound a week, Fermor had planned to sleep rough - to live like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar - but a chance introduction in Bavaria led to comfortable stays in castles, and provided a glimpse of the old Europe of princes and peasants.

Hailed as a masterpiece, A Time of Gifts is in part a coming-of-age memoir, but it is also a rich and compelling portrait of a continent that - despite its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers and grand cities - was soon to be swept away by war, modernisation and profound social change.

Not only is this journey one of physical adventure, but of cultural awakening.

Architecture, art, genealogy, quirks of history and language are all devoured - and here passed on - with a gusto uniquely his.

COLIN THUBRON, SUNDAY TIMES

One of the most romantic books of the twentieth century, Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of a long walk across Europe is also a literary treasure, a rich blend of action and observation.

GUARDIAN

Weight: 314g
Dimension: 130 x 199 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529369526