Ends of the Earth
PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR'S Roumeli (John Murray, 30s.) provides a non-Hellenic tour of Northern Greece in the sense that it concentrates most on the `Romaic' (roughly, 'folksy') aspect of the country, as opposed to the more familiar classi- cal. These two elements, Romaic and Hellenic, co-exist in each Greek breast, and Greeks them- selves can hardly tell them apart, but Mr Leigh Fermor carefully dissects and defines all this in an effective piece of analysis. Other chapters in- clude an Odyssey to Missolonghi in quest of a pair of Byron's shoes, a memorable vignette of Crete by way of digression and accounts of mountain monasteries and of the nomad Sarakat- sans. Most of this is, as the author somewhere says, a far cry from Daphnis and Chloe. It is, however, writing of high distinction by an erudite observer whose prose is often felicitously orotund, but who can also evoke a scene with economy. I like his description of one peren- nial problem of guests off the beaten track east of Corfu: 'Avoidance of the sheep's eyes is a recurrent problem for outsiders. They are highly prized by mountaineers but for all but the most assimilated travellers the message they flash from the prongs is one of harrowing reproach.'
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