Everybody should read this tribute by Christopher Hitchens to the recently deceased Patrick Leigh Fermor, an adventurer, “scholar-warrior,” and travel writer who was one of the heroes of an amazing feat of WWII derring-do on the island of Crete in 1944 – an event immortalized in Ill Met by Moonlight, a terrific (and terrifically underseen, sadly) Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger film. Dirk Bogarde played him, lucky sod.
