Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1915-2011, was born of English and Irish descent. After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to Constantinople that features in A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), he lived and travelled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. The concluding volume of the trilogy is expected to be published in the autumn of 2013.  In the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and OBE.He lived party in Greece in the house he designed with his wife Joan in an olive grove in the Mani, and partly in Worcestershire.