BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland: The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn thus.[Originally and first published (same publisher - John Murray) UK,1986: an introduction added by Jan Morris in 2005 and this hardback edition exclusive to Waterstones in 2013. Complete number line 1.] FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj.Identical 1st edition reproduction of pictorial,colour illustrated front panel+spine/backstrip of dw/dj by John Craxton with Waterstones's 'Exclusive' b/w circular adhesive label to front panel of dw/dj; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges - no major nicks or tears present,but head of spine/backstrip with minimal bumping and reciprocal creasing.Top+fore-edges bright and clean,no marks,foxing or spotting; contents pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners - appears unread - apart from my own collation.Bright, crisp,clean,publisher's original,sharp-cornered,plain dark blue cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked fluorescent blue gilt lettering to spine/ backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,slim 8vo HB+ dw/dj,1st edn thus,vii-xiipp+1-287pp [paginated] includes Jan Morris introduction,an introductory letter to Xan Fielding,8 chapters,an appendix and an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title page,a stork vignetted title page,a contents list/table with blank verso,two epigrams (Schiller and Robert Browning's - poem 'Flight of the Duchess'),a double-page regional b/w map and publisher's advert for third book of the travel trilogy to reverse of last paginated page. Sequel to the travel-autobiography, 'A Time of Gifts'.The second part of Fermor's celebrated trilogy, following 'A Time of Gifts' (1977) and preceding the posthumously published 'The Broken Road' in 2013. With a borrowed rucksack and the lifeline of a pound a week Patrick Leigh Fermor set off in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to walk to Constantinople - a walk of a year and a half. 'Between the Woods and the Water' continues the journey down the Danube from Budapest:on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain,and over the Rumanian border into Transylvania,a wild and beautiful region of forests and mountains secluded from Western eyes during centuries of religious and national complexity.Patrick Leigh Fermor planned to live 'like a tramp,a pilgrim or a wandering scholar',sleeping in work-houses, monasteries and barns.But a chance introduction in Bavaria led to a counterpointing of this rough curriculum with leisurely sojourns in castles: one night he would be kept awake by cattle,the next by the heavily embroidered coronets on the linen of a rococo four-poster; then back again to the husks of some friendly swineherd.Yet the journey,with all its adventures,was more than a picaresque trail across Europe.It was a double exploration across a continent which was already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come,and it provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events in Middle Europe.The author's travels take him to remote castles,mountain villages,monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves and eagles,of Gypsies and a diversity of sects.The woods of the title are Transylvania itself,and the water is the Danube and its tributaries.This part of the journey ends at the Iron Gates,where the Balkans begin.A further and final volume will take the author through the Balkan ranges followed by a northward sally to Wallachia in south-east Rumania,down the Black Sea coast to his final goal of Constantinople. In December 1933,at the age of eighteen,Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915- 2011) walked across Europe,reaching Constantinople in early 1935.He travelled into Greece,where in Athens he met Balasha Cantacuzene,with whom he lived - mostly in Rumania - until the outbreak of war.Serving in occupied Crete,he led a successful operation to kidnap a German general,for which he won the DSO (Distinguished Service Order).After the war he began writing,and travelled extensively round Greece with Joan Eyres Monsell whom he later married.Towards the end of his life he wrote the first two books about his early trans-European odyssey,'A Time of Gifts' and 'Between the Woods and the Water'.He planned a third,unfinished at the time of his death in 2011,which has since been edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper and published as 'The Broken Road.'.Also in 2011, Patrick Leigh Fermor works featured in The Guardian's 'Greatest Travel Book' selection. 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