Patrick Leigh Fermor
Mine, in order of reading, start with Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians (Viking, 07.95); it casts a blaze of light on the shadowy tract of history when the Roman Empire shifted away from idols. Next, Bruce Chatwin's Songlines (Cape, £10.95), the gruelling adventures of a Pom among the Abos and startling exchanges laced with thoughtful disquisitions on the great theme of Nomads; and — a milestone — the Letters of Conrad Russell 1897-1947 (John Murray, £16.95). Then, two shorter books: Penelope Tremayne's evocative Greek travels in Under Helicon (Tabb House, £9.95) and Haute Provence and the Jura, movingly revisited in Gad Elton Mayo's End of a Dream (Deutsch, £8.95). I enjoyed Quentin Crewe's buoyant Carib- bean circuit in Touch the Happy Isles (Michael Joseph, £14.95) also the Psmith- Ukridge brio of Jeremy Lewis's Playing for Time (Collins, £12.95). Wilfred Thesi- ger's chronicle of far-flung loyalties — ruling, exploring, fighting, hunting and elected hardship among a score of African and Arabian tribes — places his Life of my Choice (Collins, £15) next to Doughty and Lawrence. Last comes Colin Thubron with Behind the Wall: A Journey through China (Heinemann, f10.95). By the book's end, on the edge of the Gobi, I felt sure that the many conversations (thanks to specially mastered Mandarin), the accounts of total squalor and extreme beauty, the altertness of eye and ear, and flair, empathy, style of writing and cast of mind, had produced simultaneously an unmatched but deeply upsetting record of a journey and an achievement of great and lasting brilliance.
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