Where the Wild Winds Are: Walking Europe’s Winds from the Pennines to Provence by Nick Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Living on the south coast we have got used to the wind now. It blows across the Atlantic, up the channel and can vary from a pleasant breeze to a howling gale. Whilst it is a constant feature of life in Dorset, there are a lot of winds around the world that are such a part of the landscape that they have gained a certain amount of notoriety and their own name. Most have heard of the Mistral, the wind that scours the French Provencal landscape as it sweeps down to the Mediterranean, but around Europe that have evocative names such as Sirocco, the Levanter and the Meltemi.

These extremely strong winds, in some cases reaching 200mph, that are caused by a unique combination of natural phenomena; the makeup of the landscape allows a build-up of atmospheric pressure in the high regions that at certain points break free and sweep across a landscape causing damage to property, trees affecting the local population and playing a fundamental part of the myths and legends that make up the culture.

We even have our own named wind that blows across the Pennines called the Helm and it is here that Nick Hunt begins his walks across the European landscapes seeking these winds. Local give him pointers as to where to walk and the atmospheric details to look for so he can experience it for himself. Next is the Bora; this is a wind that blows from Trieste across Slovenia and down the Croatian coast. He climbs the Alps in search of the Fohen, a wind that can blow north and south through the Alps. His final wind is the famous Mistral, walking towards the coast with the wind behind him along an ancient pilgrimage path.

I really liked this original and interesting book from Nick Hunt, like his first book Walking the Woods and the Water he has a refreshing way of writing about the places he is walking through and the people he encounters on his way. The writing is interesting and he has managed to successfully mix the historical with the metrological whilst still maintaining his self-depreciating humour. It is another really good book from Nick, but if there was one tiny flaw, I would have liked to have heard about the other winds shown on the map at the beginning. I am hoping that is for another book.

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Joan: The Remarkable Life of Joan Leigh Fermor by Simon Fenwick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Patrick Leigh Fermor has been described as one of our greatest travel writers. His walk across Europe in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople as well as his books on Greece and the Caribbean have rightly become classics. Apart from the most fleeting of mentions, what was missing from his books though was his companion of almost 60 years, Joan.

Joan Eyres Monsell was a member of the lower aristocracy and second daughter to Viscount Monsell who in his time was an MP and First Lord of the Admiralty. Their family home was Dumbleton in Worcestershire. She grew up as most of her contemporaries did at the time, became a debutante and moved in privileged circles and mixed with the 1930s bohemian set. Even though her family were wealthy and well-connected, she differed from those around her because she earned her own living as a photographer. This was to take her America and Russia, earning her more column inches in the gossip columns.

She first came across Paddy, as he called himself, in 1944 during the Second World War when she was working as a cypher clerk in Cario, where he was lauded for his success in kidnapping General Kreipe. At this moment in time, she was still married to John Rayner, but the marriage by that point had hit the rocks. They were to fall deeply in love with each other. They travelled widely together and separately and spent a fair amount of time back in her family home of Dumbleton, but they were to put down deep roots and make their home together in a house that PLF designed in the village of Kardamyli, southern Greece. It was a place that drew others for parties, discussions, companionship and where Paddy and others were to write books that have now become classics.

It is a revealing biography of a bold and confident woman who never stood in the shadow of Leigh Fermor, but was his soul mate and closest confident until her death in 2003. Her income supported them both as he became better known as a writer and it was her inheritance that enabled them to build their dream home. Fenwick has managed to draw material from her archive to give us a sense of her character, her fears, the society that she was born into and her desire of wanting a family and to settle down with the man that she loved. Even though we know more than ever about Joan, she still manages to defy categorisation and still remains a little aura of mystique. Excellent biography of Joan Leigh Fermor, a woman no longer unknown. 4.5 stars

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Dashing for the Post: The Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor by Patrick Leigh Fermor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Patrick Leigh Fermor rightly lays a claim to be one of our greatest travel writers. He is most famous for his walk across Europe in 1933 from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. It was distilled down to three books; A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and then the final volume published after his death, The Broken Road and tell the story of a Europe now lost and the beginning rumbles of war and tension across the continent. Other travel books that he wrote were about the country that he fell head over heels in love with, Greece and of his travels around the Caribbean.

He was also a great writer of letters; this was a pre-internet day, and international phone calls were problematic, to say the least, so this was his way of keeping in touch with his wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Adam Sisman has spent hours pouring over the material from the National Library of Scotland and private collections of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s letters to bring us this fine collection and insight into his character and passions.

Leigh Fermor writes to all manner of people in this collection, but there are several names that crop up regularly, Xan Fielding, Lawrence Durrell, John Betjeman and his wife Joan. There are letters to lovers, including Balasha Cantacuzène, a Romanian princess and a large number of apologetic letters to the publisher John Murray as another deadline for a book sailed by. He used them to inform people of the latest projects he was working on, to develop ideas, to sort out his social life and organise the steady stream of visitors to his Greek home.

This is the second collection of letters by Fermor, the other is In Tearing Haste written from the Duchess of Devonshire which I haven’t read yet. But this collection of letters written from 1940 to 2010 by a master of prose is really quite special. They have a different style of writing to his books, probably as he never anticipated them being published, but they are entertaining, amusing and demonstrate just how gregarious and full of fun and life he was. I didn’t realise that he used to frequently stay just outside Wimborne and these letters show just how he could mix with the great and the good as well as the local peasants and be accepted by all of them. Definitely one for the fan of Leigh Fermor, but also would appeal to those that want to learn about the character of a fascinating man.

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The Mysterium: Unexplained and extraordinary stories for a post-Nessie generation by David Bramwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

People are drawn to the strange and the unknown, those stories that even after a second time of hearing make little sense. Some of these are deeply rooted in our oldest legends, but there are a number of mysteries and contemporary folklore that still managed to defy explanation in our modern, always connected, internet age.

In the Mysterium, we will encounter mysteries that have been around for years like the number stations, tragic deaths that no expert has been able to explain such as when a girl was found in the water tank of a hotel after CCTV showed some very peculiar behaviour when she was in the lift. There are entities that have slipped from the virtual domain to become the elements of our nightmares and words that appear embedded in the road. We will learn from those that hear a hum in the place that they live, and of dunes that sing, You may have heard of the darknet, a place where various nefarious activities take place but have you have ever heard of the Deep Web? Me neither.

Some of the stories that David Bramwell and Jo Keeling have collected are seriously creepy and they have managed a fascinating sum up of the current raft of mysteries and what can now be considered modern folklore. It is nicely written as they take care to explain the background to the story. I particularly like the way that they have given pointers to other things that you go and read or watch if a specific tale interests you. A great little collection of the truly bizarre.

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