Patrick Leigh Fermor
Spectator Books of the Year: The biography of a man who prayed he’d never have one
‘I pray I shall not find a biographer,’ said Steven Runciman, eminent historian of Byzantium and the Crusades, Grand Orator…
In the footsteps of Marco Polo: the journey that changed William Dalrymple’s life
This is the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of William Dalrymple’s first book, In Xanadu: A Quest At the end of the…
Why you should never meet your heroes
As we become steadily accustomed to life in the Age of Celebrity, it’s become a truth that, as Mark Mason…