Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure

by Artemis Cooper

  With another team headed by Henry Coombe-Tennant, who was later to become a monk at Downside, Paddy’s team pored over aerial photographs of their target: Oflag IV-C, otherwise known as Colditz. The fortress had a fearsome reputation for impregnability, and housed some of those VIP ‘bargaining counters’ known to the Germans as Prominente.fn2 Then Paddy heard that Colonel Miles Reid MC, who had been held in Colditz before being released as part of an exchange of prisoners, was back in Britain. Paddy had met Reid during the Greek campaign, when he had commanded the Phantom Reconnaissance Unit. With the permission of SAARF’s commandant, Brigadier J. S. ‘Crasher’ Nichols, Paddy borrowed a staff car and drove down to Haslemere where Reid and his wife were living.

  Reid thought the plan insane, and was appalled that anyone should even consider it. ‘Had we learnt nothing of the impregnability of the fortress, had we no idea of the thoroughness and rigour of checks and counter-checks of working parties, not heard of the scrutinies and the roll-calls? There was absolutely no hope of the plan succeeding … and instead of good, untold harm would ensue.’4 Paddy drove back to Wentworth feeling very downcast, and the following day Reid himself turned up demanding to see Brigadier Nichols. They remained in his office for some time, and both emerged looking furious. ‘Crasher’ Nichols was adamant that the mission was viable and would go ahead, but Reid had his way – largely because the plan was overtaken by events. The POWs in Colditz were freed by Patton’s advancing armour on 16 April, though no Prominente had been left behind; they had all been moved before the Americans arrived.

  Paddy had one other task, which was to see Billy Moss’s account of the Kreipe Operation safely through the censors. Moss was in London at the time, so it seems odd that he left this to his friend: but perhaps he felt that Paddy’s name and contacts might give the project a better chance. The censor (unnamed) was not impressed, describing it as a ‘manuscript of questionable taste and no literary or documentary value’.5 Paddy was aware of its shortcomings, particularly an ‘attitude of patronage to the Cretans that hints that they are only fairly gentle savages … However the publishers are going to make some pretty drastic editorial revisions, so it may eventually emerge as what it should be: a young man’s unpretentious account of an exciting adventure.’6

  One might also ask why it was Billy, not Paddy, who wrote the story of the Kreipe Operation. Yet it had always been agreed that Moss should write up the mission, and as it turned out, only he had had the time to keep notes. Moss had spent days of enforced idleness, guarding the General with a handful of Cretans in mountain caves, unable to have more than a halting conversation with any of them; whereas Paddy was working flat out trying to liaise with Cairo, keep out of German hands, and bring the party to an isolated beach. There were other considerations too. Paddy had been with the Cretan resistance for most of the war, and for better or worse, he had become an important figure in its history. A book by him would have had a huge impact on the island, and despite all his efforts to be fair to everybody, it would inevitably have offended some people. And there would have been unpleasant repercussions if some mischief-maker dragged up the Tsangarakis tragedy. As far as Paddy was concerned, it was not worth the risk.

  With the Colditz operation cancelled, Paddy and Henry Coombe-Tennant – still wearing SAARF badges on their uniforms – were flown to Luneburg Heath in Germany, and stationed in the bombed-out ruins of Hamburg. They were now part of a team whose mission was to seek out and pursue war criminals, and to inspect the local tribunals set up to regulate claims and administer justice. They were ordered not to fraternize with the Germans, and instructed to look out for the so-called Werwolfen – doomed young Nazi fanatics, whose tactics were thought to include stretching wire across the road to decapitate people.

  Paddy was in a car with two others, driving near Itzehoe in Holstein, when he noticed a signpost pointing to Schloss Rantzau. Hoping to get some news of his old friend Josias who had been so kind to him in Bucharest, they drove up to the castle. Like every other manor house and schloss in the area it was filled with refugees from Hamburg, but Paddy managed to find a relative of Josias, and the news was not good. He had been taken by the Russians when they marched into Bucharest in August 1944, and no one knew what had become of him. Paddy later discovered that he had been deported to the USSR, where he died in captivity some five years after the end of the war. His lover, Marcelle Catargi, committed suicide.

  Paddy spent three weeks in Denmark after leaving Germany, and came home with four sporting guns which ‘someone had looted and then gave to me’ (probably Paddy’s way of saying he had looted them himself). He was back in London in time to celebrate Victory in Europe Day, on 8 May 1945.

  At a time when every man of military age was defined by what sort of war he had had, Paddy’s celebrated adventures meant that he was much in demand. One of those who took him up was Emerald Lady Cunard, who lived in a lavishly appointed suite in the Dorchester where she entertained politicians, generals, bemedalled soldiers, musicians and writers. It was here that Paddy met Ann Rothermere, later Fleming, with whom he made an instant bond; and the writer and critic Peter Quennell, who was to publish some of Paddy’s earliest work in the Cornhill magazine. More often he was to be found at the Gargoyle Club, which had survived the war with its Matisse-mirrored walls and tiny dance floor intact. Here he saw a lot of Xan Fielding, back from Cambodia, Nepal and Tibet.

  Billy Moss and Sophie Tarnowska had married in Cairo that spring, and though Paddy was sad to miss the occasion, he was glad that Joan had been able to attend. Soon after, she set off on a long journey into Lebanon, Syria and Iraq with her friend, the artist Dick Wyndham. Paddy was perhaps not quite so happy about this, but Joan came and went as she pleased.

  She returned to England that summer, and invited Paddy to come and stay at her family home in Dumbleton, Worcestershire. Dumbleton Hall is a large neo-Jacobean house bristling with gables, chimneys and cupolas, designed by G. S. Repton in 1837 and set on the outer edge of the Cotswolds. Joan’s mother Sybil was welcoming but painfully shy, the opposite of her husband who radiated confidence and authority. Among the guests were two of Joan’s oldest friends. Lady Dorothy (‘Coote’) Lygon was a friend of Evelyn Waugh, and the model for Lady Cordelia Flyte in Brideshead Revisited. Round and owlish in appearance, she was to spend many years teaching in Athens. She had been a debutante in the same year as Joan, as had Wilhelmine (Billa) Harrod (née Creswell). Happily married to the economist Roy Harrod, Billa would devote much of her life to saving the churches of East Anglia; but at that time, she was better known for being the inspiration for Fanny, the narrator in Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love.

  Both Billa and Coote approved of Paddy. Joan’s brother Graham Eyres Monsell was harder to impress, but there too he succeeded. Graham was tall, elegant and a gifted pianist. Like Paddy he had served in the Intelligence Corps, seen action in Africa and Italy, and had left the army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was devoted to Joan, with whom he shared a strong resentment of their father, who had denied Joan a proper education and had forbidden Graham to study the piano to professional level. In Lord Monsell’s mind ‘only pansies played the piano’,7 and he felt that Graham’s homosexuality was somehow linked to his love of music. Graham often suffered from bouts of severe depression, and in these moments he relied on Joan. Billa Harrod once said that she had never seen a brother and sister so close.

  In early September Joan set off for Athens and her job at the Embassy, where she was secretary to Osbert Lancaster, then press attaché at the Embassy. They knew each other through John Rayner, who first commissioned Lancaster to draw regular pocket cartoons for the Daily Express which appeared, with few interruptions, from 1939 to 1981. Paddy was eager to join Joan in Athens, and began looking for a job that would base him in Greece.

  London was crowded with recently demobbed men like himself all looking for jobs. Paddy’s enviable war record had certainly improved his prospects, but he was now thirty years
old, had never been to university and never been in regular employment. He heard that Sir Louis Greig was looking for a tutor to the young King Faisal of Iraq and applied for the job, but he decided not to pursue it. Then he heard of a vacancy in Athens, for the post of deputy director for the British Institute of Higher English Studies, which had been set up the previous year by Maurice Cardiff under the auspices of the British Council.

  Paddy was interviewed for the job by Colonel Kenneth Johnstone of the Council, whose methods were rather baffling. Paddy realized he had been accepted only when the Colonel rose to his feet, shook hands, and said, ‘Don’t worry my boy, everything will work out splendidly.’8

  Although the Germans had blown up the docks and harbours of Piraeus before their retreat, Athens had not been too badly damaged during the war. Far more severely affected were the Athenians, who had lived in a state of semi-starvation since 1941. One of the results was that almost everyone kept chickens, even those living in apartment blocks in the city centre. The crowing of cocks, added to the cries of street vendors, blaring radios and the metallic cacophony of antique trams, was enough to convince Osbert Lancaster that Athens was one of the noisiest capitals in Europe. In 1946 the Acropolis still dominated every prospect, for most people lived in modest two-storey houses. In the poorer parts of town, below Mount Hymettus, the walls were covered with Communist slogans in red.

  Paddy’s immediate superior was the unfailingly affable Rex Warner, a Greek scholar who was considered one of the most promising novelists of his generation. Maurice Cardiff remembered them both. ‘At a midnight contest in a taverna, given quite difficult rhymes, he and Paddy produced passable sonnets in minutes, but Rex’s was the more perfect and metrically correct.’9 As Director of the Institute Warner was answerable to Steven Runciman, whom Paddy had met in Sofia in 1934 and who was now the British Council’s Representative. Tall, fastidious and a brilliant linguist, Runciman was then working on the History of the Crusades which made his name; but his chief recreation was collecting scandals and stories. ‘Royal gossip is very good,’ he once said, ‘and political gossip is even better; but my dear, nothing beats Vatican gossip.’10

  They all worked in the same building in Ermou Street, and Runciman had vivid memories of Paddy. ‘He looked very good in an office,’ said Runciman, ‘but none of us could think of anything to do with him.’ Cardiff recalled that Paddy was not at work very often and when he was he seemed to be throwing a party, sitting with his feet on the desk and entertaining a stream of Cretan visitors. The Cretan economy had been almost destroyed by the occupation, and there was very little work. Paddy found menial jobs for both Manoli Paterakis and George Psychoundakis in the Institute; they and others often spent the night on the floor of his room at the Grande Bretagne, and later, in the flat he was lent in Kolonaki. His office was always blue with cigarette smoke, and the sound of loud talk, Cretan songs and rollicking laughter echoed down the passage.

  This did not make him popular. ‘There was a very insensitive side to Paddy,’ said Cardiff. ‘He was very bumptious, a bit of a know-all, and his enthusiasm and noisiness could be rather wearing.’11 Steven Runciman, too, had his reservations about Paddy. Cardiff said that this was because he resented the fact that Paddy knew more Greek royals than he did; but Runciman also saw how Paddy disturbed the peace of the office. ‘All the girls were in love with him,’ he said. ‘He used to borrow money from them – and I have to tell you, they weren’t always paid back. There were occasions when I had to sort out Paddy’s little irregularities myself …’12

  One of Paddy’s closest friends at this time was George Katsimbalis, whom he had met on his first wartime posting to Athens. Among his many literary projects, Katsimbalis was editing the Anglo-Hellenic Review – a literary magazine which had been given a home in the British Institute. They met almost every day: at Psara’s at the top of the Anaphiotika steps, or in the Platanos taverna in the still tourist-free Plaka. Katsimbalis ‘was expert in three languages and hardly a Greek, a French or an English-speaking poet seemed to have existed … of which he couldn’t recite, without a hesitation or a mistake, dozens of pages by heart’. He was also a brilliant raconteur, of living stories rather than rehearsed party pieces. ‘New facets would be revealed each time because each time it was a live experience being drawn from a deep and fresh reservoir of memory.’13

  Katsimbalis was at the heart of a group of friends that included Joan’s boss Osbert Lancaster; Monty Woodhouse, who was advising on Greek affairs; the painter Nico Ghika, who with Yanni Tsaroukis and Yanni Moralis was evolving a new vision of Greece; and George Seferis, a quiet, thoughtful diplomat who was also the greatest poet of his generation. The ache of exile was a frequent theme in his poetry, using ancient myths to illuminate both the past of Greece and its very uncertain future. Lawrence Durrell had published poems by Seferis in Personal Landscape and, with Rex Warner, translated his work into English.

  The parliamentary elections that took place in Greece in March 1946 were the first in ten years, but they were boycotted by the Communists and the political parties of the left. The result was a victory for the monarchists, and over sixty per cent of Greeks voted in the plebiscite for the return of the King on 1 September. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) had not been outlawed; but in a right-wing backlash, gangs of armed men with grievances born of the occupation had taken their revenge on known Communists, particularly in the Peloponnese. Meanwhile the Communists began to regroup in Epirus and Thessaly, though at this stage with no plan beyond that of defending themselves and consolidating their support. ‘Most contemporary accounts’, wrote Monty Woodhouse, ‘agree in depicting the descent into civil war as a gradual deterioration, which took its gravest turn much later in the year.’14

  A few days before the elections took place the British Ambassador, Sir Rex Leeper, was succeeded by Sir Clifford Norton. Having been Ambassador in Poland, Norton understood the potential threat from Soviet Russia, and in the years that followed, he was instrumental in maintaining British support for Greece while the civil war raged. His wife, Noel Evelyn, was always known as Peter. A passionate collector of contemporary art, she brought in her wake two young and promising painters: Lucian Freud and (in May 1946) John Craxton, who in years to come was to design the jackets of almost all Paddy’s books.

  Craxton became a great friend of Paddy’s, and was able to put Lady Norton straight about his sexual orientation. Because he had never refused floor-space to a Cretan looking for work, Lady Norton had heard that Paddy’s rooms were filled with young men, and like many others she had leapt to the wrong conclusion. Craxton decided to settle in Greece for a while, and it was Paddy who suggested the island of Poros, opposite Lemonodassos.

  One visitor to Greece that year was Maurice Bowra, classical scholar, poet, and Warden of Wadham College for over thirty years. Cyril Connolly described him as ‘a person sculpted out of a harder, grander material than anybody else’.15 Bowra had come to Greece in his capacity as Chair of the British Council Humanities Advisory Committee as well as to lecture, so he was introduced to the staff of the Institute. Although he became one of Joan’s most devoted admirers, Bowra was not so sure about Paddy; in a report written on the Council’s work in Greece, Bowra wrote: ‘A misfit is Mr P. Lee-Fermore [sic] who has many excellent gifts but is unfit for office work. With his experience in Crete he has many unusual Greek acquaintances, which is a great asset, and he might be better employed on a roving commission of making contacts, for which he is admirably fitted.’16

  With this in mind, Steven Runciman suggested that Maurice Cardiff and Paddy (who was joined by Joan) should visit the British Council’s recently established outpost in Salonika, and see some of the larger towns. They had no political brief beyond talking to people, testing the temperature of pro-British feeling, and finding out what they could about the Communist resurgence.

  As they drove north, Paddy told stories of his participation in the Greek campaign in 1940, and the Venizelist revolution in
1935. Maurice was not entirely sure he believed it all; but in a village near the Albanian border, a man came up and embraced Paddy saying, ‘Do you remember when the Germans were coming and the Papas put up the white flag, and we grabbed the old bastard and made him pull it down?’

  ‘He had a passion for words,’ Cardiff continued. ‘Crossing a high pass over the Pindos range we came across some Vlach shepherds with their flocks … Paddy had picked up Romanian on his travels. Now he tried it out on the Vlachs with some success in general conversation and triumphantly in an extended haggle over a magnificent black sheepskin cloak …’17 They celebrated their return to Athens with a drink in the bar of the Grande Bretagne, with a group of friends including Nico Ghika and his first wife Tiggy (short for Antigone). Cardiff recalled how Joan mentioned the sheepskin cloak, and begged Paddy to get it. He returned with the cloak over his arm, adopted a Byronic pose and flung it round his shoulders, in a magnificent gesture which swept all the drinks into Tiggy’s lap.

  As there was still nothing for him to do at the office, Paddy volunteered to do a lecture tour round Greece, to introduce the glories of British culture – Lord Byron, for example, or the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – to a Greek audience. Since it seemed as good an excuse as any to get him out of the way, Runciman agreed.

  As Osbert Lancaster was about to leave the Embassy, Joan was once more free to accompany Paddy. At first the lectures were held in sparsely attended halls, where a handful of students and one or two elderly ladies listened respectfully. All this changed in Corfu, where the British Council’s work was in the hands of a remarkable woman called Maria Aspiotti. She had Paddy and Joan to stay in her house for a day or two, and put the word about that Major Leigh Fermor, the hero who had captured the German general, was going to give a lecture. Paddy gulped when he heard that she had hired an enormous cinema for the event, but on the night it was filled to bursting, with shouts of ‘Kreipe! Kreipe!’ from the eager audience. As Maria Aspiotti had guessed, there was only one story the audience wanted to hear from Paddy, and it had nothing to do with the Pre-Raphaelites.