A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople from The Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube. by FERMOR, PATRICK LEIGH:

London John Murray, 1977 1st edition. Hardback, approx 9 x 5.5 inches. Blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine and ‘crane’ design to front. In illustrated dustwrapper. In very good condition with very good dustwrapper. (DW edges slightly rubbed, a few marks on rear cover, price clipped.) Inscription on front endpaper. A very clean and tight copy. 291pp. Illustrated with a portrait photograph of author, and a double-page map. A “remarkable book of travel-autobiography”. The author joined the Irish Guards, and fought in Greece and Crete. He organised the capture and evacuation of the German Commander, General Kreipe. The journey described here took a year and a half, and took him to Mitteleuropa, the Teutonic and Slav heartland, the Gothic north, up the Rhine, and down the Danube into the old Balkans.