Maurice Bowra on Patrick Leigh Fermor

When I published Maurice Bowra’s scabrous satires on his contemporaries, New Bats in Old Belfries, in 2005 (pseudonymously), I had to leave blank spaces where two of them should have appeared. This was because their subject was still alive, and was unwilling to give his approval for their inclusion in his lifetime. (Ludovic Kennedy’s name had to be blanked out in another poem for the same reason.) It can now be revealed that Bowra’s target in the excised poems was Patrick (‘Paddy’) Leigh Fermor (PLF), writer, traveller — and Cretan war hero as a result of his activities while serving in the Special Operations Executive during the second world war. PLF, born on 11 February 1915, died on 10 June this year, aged 96. His memorial service was held on 15 December.

In an extended correspondence with me in my capacity as one of the editors of Bowra’s poems, PLF showed that he was much put out by the ones on himself, especially ‘The Wounded Gigolo’, which he felt was ‘a bit cracked’. He vacillated about the other poem, ‘On the Coast of Terra Fermoor’ (why did Bowra misspell ‘Fermor’?), but in the end voted against, no doubt partly influenced by the opinion of his late wife, Joan, who ‘thought that all the people mentioned in the collection would have been cut to the quick, however much they put on non-spoilsport faces.’ When James Morwood of Wadham visited him later in his Greek home to ask about his friendship with Bowra (on behalf of Leslie Mitchell, Bowra’s biographer), he found that the hurt of reading the poems was still smarting. To me PLF wrote: ‘Could Maurice’s shade ponder all this now, I think I might emerge as more of a saviour than a spoilsport.