The Traveller's Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands

Paddy's portrayal of the islands could be said to have jump-started the tourism industry upon which the Caribbean has since largely depended
Being a natural romantic ... he was able to probe the hidden recesses of this mixed civilisation and to present us with a picture of the Indies more penetrating and original than any that has been presented before
He is the ideal traveller, inquisitive, humorous and vivid in depicting
Bringing the landscape alive as no other writer can, he uses his profound and eclectic understanding of cultures and peoples ... to paint vivid pictures - nobody has illuminated the geography of Europe better
John Murray is doing the decent thing and reissuing all of Leigh Fermor's main books ... But what else would you expect from a publisher whose commitment to geography is such that for more than two centuries it has widened our understanding of the world?
A substantial and fascinating work, with the adventurer's signature across every page
No-one has captured and evoked the extraordinary differences between the islands better
Amusing, knowledgeable, and percipient, it is everything a travel book should be.

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was an intrepid traveler, a heroic soldier, and a writer with a unique prose style. After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to Constantinople that begins in A Time of Gifts (1977) and continues through Between the Woods and the Water (1986), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. In the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and OBE. He lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani—and partly in Worcestershire. He was knighted in 2004 for his services to literature and to BritishߝGreek relations.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a doctoral student in geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written for The Guardian, The Believer, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications.