Book Review: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Between the Woods and the Water

In a modern world full of pressure, we should embark on an adventure of our own

On Holy Saturday, 1934, Patrick Leigh Fermor stood on a bridge in the Hungarian town of Esztergom overlooking the Danube. Fifty years later, he would describe his journey across Europe in his magnum opus, Between the Woods and the Water. 

Born into an established English family, Fermor’s father was the director of the Geological Survey of India and was knighted in 1910. His father left Fermor with a surrogate family in Northamptonshire as an infant, leaving him to roam its gentle, rolling hills. He thence developed an audacity that would come to define him. At the tender age of 19, he was expelled from the King’s School, a public school in Kent, for an illicit relationship with a tradesman’s daughter. Later, he decided to embark upon a walking journey from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).

In 1941, Fermor joined the British Special Forces. Disguised as German military police, he notably kidnapped a Nazi general in the Greek island of Crete, evading 22 check-points undetected, and transported the prisoner to British-held Egypt. Following the war, he returned to Crete with his wife and spent the rest of his days on the peaceful island. Finally at the age of 71, half a century after his expedition across the European continent did Patrick Leigh Fermor recount his voyage. The result—Between the Woods—is a masterful synthesis of thoughtful, mature prose combined with youthful, passionate adventurism. When asked why he took so long, he replied, “I was too lazy.” 

In a modern world where travel writers are a dime a dozen, what sets Patrick Leigh Fermor apart is his vivid writing and encyclopedic knowledge of history. We see the wide expanse of the Great Hungarian Plain, as he gallops across its endless meadows and fields. We hear the meandering Danube, its gentle ripples frisking the quays of the riverbank. We feel the gravity of history, as he climbs the steps of the dark fortresses of Buda. Across the entirety of his book is a cadence of long flowing sentences that leaves you marvelling at his genius. 

Perhaps more importantly, Between the Water and the Woods is remarkable for being at the perfect place at the right time. Nation-building occurred in Eastern Europe centuries after their Western counterparts, which preserved the rustic medieval way of life for peasants in the countryside. The world we are introduced to in Fermor’s writing is thus one frozen in time and evokes the Western tradition of orientalism, which exoticized the Near East. 

Across his journey, we encounter the waltzing gypsies around the campfire, the counts and countesses who let Fermor rest in their castles, and the primordial custom of the sweep-well throughout the Hungarian countryside. That world—untarnished by industrialisation—no longer exists. On the verge of world war, Fermor manages to get last glimpses of this antiquated society before it is killed by the rampaging Wehrmacht war machine that ravaged the Hungarian countryside, followed subsequently by decades of Communist oppression. 

At Middlesex, it is often easy to feel bogged down by the tedium of daily life. Patrick Leigh Fermor reminds us that there is more to the world than our classrooms, and that perhaps, we will one day embark on an adventure of our own that is as exhilarating.

Calvin Sun ‘29