Holiday reading

The 2 great English walks of the 20th Century. In 1933 Patrick Leigh Fermor set out aged 19 to walk to Constantinople. Laurie Lee left England for Spain in 1934 aged 19 - choosing that country because he knew the Spanish for ‘would you please give me a glass of water’ They couldn’t have been more different: Fermor an English public schoolboy ( he like me went to the King’s School Canterbury, though he carries the badge of honour of having been expelled) and Lee basically a country yokel from Gloucestershire, but they both write as sweetly as any writer you could find in English, and the love of adventure and the wide-eyed joy of discovery and innocent exploration is magical, all under the darkening shadow of the Spanish Civil War and the Third Reich. All the better then that during my own darkened confinement Sarah read me alternate chapters. We both rediscovered the pleasure of reading aloud, though now I’m ok again I have to do my own reading.