FERMOR, Patrick Leigh [Xan and Daphne Fielding].

A Time To Keep Silence.

Limited First Edition of A Time To Keep Silence; Warmly Inscribed by Patrick Leigh Fermor to Daphne and Xan Fielding

London: The Queen Anne Press, 1953.

$4,200.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-150279

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Limited first edition of the author's third book, one of 500 numbered copies, this is number 75, regarding his experiences in various monasteries. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated by John Craxton. Association copy, inscribed by Leigh Fermor to Daphne and Xan Fielding in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, "To Daphne and Xan, with love from Paddy London 18.iii.1953." The recipient Daphne Fielding was a British socialite and memoirist best known for The Duchess of Jermyn Street and The Nearest Way Home, offer valuable insight into the world of the “Bright Young Things” and the decline of the English upper classes. Xan Fielding was a British writer and former SOE operative whose travel memoirs and wartime accounts, notably Hide and Seek, blend adventurous narrative with rich cultural insights from the Mediterranean and Middle East. After the fall of Crete in May 1941, he joined the Special Operations Executive, and was eventually landed in Crete with a supply of weapons and explosives by the submarine Torbay, under Commander Anthony Miers. Fielding teamed up with Patrick Leigh Fermor, and built an intelligence gathering network which provided detailed information on the movement of Axis troops, shipping, and air transport. He arranged for the transportation to Egypt of hundreds of Allied soldiers left behind after the evacuation, and now being hidden by the Cretans. After six months Fielding returned to Cairo, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order on 15 October 1942. Very good in a very good dust jacket. A remarkable association copy, linking these two great heroes and writers.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was a travel writer who became a war hero by kidnapping the commanding German officer on the Nazi-occupied island of Crete. (The movie "Ill Met by Moonlight" is a fictionalized account of his experience.) In A Time to Keep Silence, Leigh Fermor writes about a more inward journey, describing his several sojourns in some of Europe’s oldest and most venerable monasteries. He stays at the Abbey of St. Wandrille, a great repository of art and learning; at Solesmes, famous for its revival of Gregorian chant; and at the deeply ascetic Trappist monastery of La Grande Trappe, where monks take a vow of silence. Finally, he visits the rock monasteries of Cappadocia, hewn from the stony spires of a moonlike landscape, where he seeks some trace of the life of the earliest Christian anchorites. More than a history or travel journal, however, this beautiful short book is a meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude for modern life. Leigh Fermor writes, “In the seclusion of a cell—an existence whose quietness is only varied by the silent meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods—the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is unthought of in the ordinary world.” "More than a history or travel journal, however, this beautiful short book is a meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude for modern life" (New York Review of Books). "His shortest book (and to my mind his best)its hammered terseness is a good match for the sobriety of the subject" (Anthony Lane, The New Yorker).