A Time of Gifts (1977) by Patrick Leigh Fermor is regarded by many critics as one of the classics of travel literature. Published by John Murray when the author was 62, it is a memoir of the first part of Fermor's journey on foot across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1933/34. The introduction is a letter to his wartime colleague Xan Fielding. The title comes from a poem by Louis MacNeice.
A Time of Gifts recounts his journey as far as the Middle Danube. A second volume, Between the Woods and the Water (1986), begins with the author crossing the Mária Valéria bridge from Czechoslovakia into Hungary and ends when he reaches the Iron Gate, where the Danube formed the boundary between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Romania. A planned third volume, of Fermor's journey to its completion in Constantinople, was never completed. In 2011 Fermor's publisher, John Murray announced that it would publish the final volume in 2013, drawing from his diary at the time and an early draft that he wrote in the 1960s.
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