It seems to be dawning on the intelligentsia what a remarkable man we've lost in Patrick Leigh Fermor (see previous post). Here's Hitchens on the subject. And Jan Morris said," One must not gush, but like Venice, Château d'Yquem or a Rolls-Royce of the 1930s, he really was beyond competition; and since so far as I know everybody liked him, everyone enjoyed his mastery." As I said somewhere else, if I had a second go at life, I'd try to live a life as much like Patrick Leigh Fermor's as possible, for few lives have been better lived and in better balance: worth the effort, in short, and amply rewarded.