Patrick Leigh Fermor

Award won Role or nomination

1. 1915 age 0

   Born

2. 1958 age 43

   CreditThe Roots of Heavenscreenwriter

3. 2011 age 96

   Died

• OWOrson Welles1 title
• MAMalcolm Arnold1 title
• EAEddie Albert1 title
• DZDarryl F. Zanuck1 title
• THTrevor Howard1 title
• HLHerbert Lom1 title
• FWFrancis de Wolff1 title
• JHJohn Huston1 title
• OMOswald Morris1 title
• JMJacques Marin1 title

• 
  Photo:Δημήτρης ΠαπαδήμοςCC BY-SA 3.0

• When our President first telephoned to Greece and suggested that I should have the great honour of saying a ‘few words’ on this important anniversary, I was rather alarmed; and, for several nights afterwards, between sleeping and waking, I had some nightmarish visions, curiously entangled with the adjuncts and impedimenta of SOE. I saw myself sneaking into a Special Forces Club whose appearance and atmosphere had subtly but completely changed from the snug and welcoming haven we all know: it was entirely different, too from the Royal and Ducal precincts where we are feasting tonight. The place had become a daunting and shadowy Valhalla, a club only fit for primordial heroes to drink in, and it was guarded by ogreish janitors. I sneaked in with trepidation, almost forgetting the password as I did so, leaving my coat in a grim cloak-and-dagger room and, at last, with misgiving found my place at a very unusual dining table with a commando-knife on one side of my place, a gelignite plunger

  Patrick Leigh Fermor, CC BY-SA 4.0

• [the sale of his two trunks from the Harrods Depository] 'still aches sometimes, like an old wound in wet weather'

  Patrick Leigh Fermor, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Germany! . . . I could hardly believe I was there. For someone born in the second year of World War I, those three syllables were heavily charged. Even as I trudged across it, early subconscious notions, when one first confused Germans with germs and knew that both were bad, still sent up fumes; fumes, moreover, which the ensuing years had expanded into clouds as dark and baleful as the Ruhr smoke along the horizon and still potent enough to unloose over the landscape a mood of - what? Something too evasive to be captured and broken down in a hurry.

  Patrick Leigh Fermor, CC BY-SA 4.0

• It was a time of anxiety and danger; and for our captive, of hardship and distress. During a lull in the pursuit, we woke up among the rocks just as a brilliant dawn was breaking over the crest of Mount Ida. We had been toiling over it, through snow and then rain, for the last two days. Looking across the valley at this flashing mountain-crest, the general [Kriepe] murmured to himself:<blockquote>Vides ut alta stet nive candidum, Soracte...</blockquote>

  Patrick Leigh Fermor, CC BY-SA 4.0

• It was one of the ones I knew! I continued from where he had broken off:<blockquote>nec jam sustineant onus, Silvae laborantes, geluque, Flumina constiterint acuto</blockquote>

  Patrick Leigh Fermor, CC BY-SA 4.0

• and so on, through the remaining five stanzas to the end. The general's blue eyes had swivelled away from the mountain-top to mine — and when I'd finished, after a long silence, he said: `Ach so, Herr Major!' It was very strange. As though, for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.

  Patrick Leigh Fermor, CC BY-SA 4.0