Patrick Leigh Fermor

Spectator Books of the Year: The biography of a man who prayed he’d never have one

Lewis Jones 31 December 2016 9:30

‘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

William Dalrymple 24 June 2015 17:23

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

Philip Sidney 14 October 2014 15:41

As we become steadily accustomed to life in the Age of Celebrity, it’s become a truth that, as Mark Mason…