Leigh Fermor was born in London, the son of
Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, a distinguished
geologist, and Muriel Aeyleen (Eileen), daughter of Charles Taafe Ambler. His mother added the "Leigh" before "Fermor" in his surname, although it was not a true
double-barrelled name. Shortly after his birth, his mother and sister left to join his father in India, leaving the infant Patrick in England with a family in
Northamptonshire: first in the village of
Weedon, and later in nearby
Dodford. He did not meet his parents or his sister again until he was four years old. As a child Leigh Fermor had problems with academic structure and limitations, and was sent to a school for "difficult" children. He was later expelled from
The King's School, Canterbury, after he was caught holding hands with a greengrocer's daughter. At school he also became friendly with another contemporary,
Alan Watts. His last report from The King's School noted that the young Leigh Fermor was "a dangerous mixture of sophistication and recklessness". He continued learning by reading texts on
Greek,
Latin,
Shakespeare and history, with the intention of entering the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Gradually he changed his mind, deciding to become an author instead, and in the summer of 1933 relocated to
Shepherd Market in London, living with a few friends. Soon, faced with the challenges of an author's life in London and rapidly draining finances, he decided to leave for Europe.
Early travels At the age of 18 Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe from the
Hook of Holland to
Constantinople (
Istanbul). He set off on 8 December 1933 with a few clothes, several letters of introduction, the
Oxford Book of English Verse and a
Loeb volume of
Horace's
Odes. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but was also invited by gentry and aristocracy into the country houses of Central Europe. He experienced hospitality in many monasteries along the way. Two of his later travel books,
A Time of Gifts (1977) and
Between the Woods and the Water (1986), cover this journey, but at the time of his death, a book on the final part of his journey remained unfinished. This was edited and assembled from Leigh Fermor's diary of the time and an early draft he wrote in the 1960s. It was published as
The Broken Road by
John Murray in September 2013. Leigh Fermor arrived in Istanbul on 1 January 1935, then continued to travel around Greece, spending a few weeks in
Mount Athos. In March he was involved in the campaign of
royalist forces in
Macedonia against an
attempted Republican revolt. In
Athens, he met Balasha Cantacuzène (
Bălaşa Cantacuzino), a Romanian
Phanariote noblewoman, with whom he fell in love. They shared an old watermill outside the city looking out towards
Poros, where she painted and he wrote. They moved on to
Băleni, Galați, the
Cantacuzène house in
Moldavia,
Romania, where he remained until the autumn of 1939. He did not meet Cantacuzène again until 1965. ==Second World War==