Customer Reviews
Immensely enjoyable! - By: Mr. DAVID Geer, 27 Sep 2008 
As one reviewer said it makes you envious of a vanished time & life style otherwise immensely enjoyable!
A great classic - and much more - By: Montagnano, 22 Jun 2008 Leigh Fermor's great classic is extraordinary. His language is immensely beautiful, but I believe that the secret to understand the book is that he is actually painting pictures with words. There are some great set piecesin this second volume such as the Easter ceremoniesin Hungary, his unforgettable aristocratic hosts & the chateau life he began to lead after Munich while still camping out from time to time. His descriptions of those country houses, & their denizens, particularly once he crosses into Romania, are like small jewels.
The great glory of this book is the trip he makesin Transylvania: it shows a world which no longer exists (Romanian, Hungarians, Swabians etc all living togetherin one area) & makes one wish to go there immediately.
Leigh Fermor is a polymath & the book is not really travel literature at all, or if it is, it is of a totally different order to anything I have ever read.
Will Leigh Fermor write the promised third part of the great trilogy?
Simply wonderful - By: , 11 Sep 2002 This is the sequel to 'A Time of Gifts', & continues the young Leigh-Fermor's walk through the length of 1930s Europe. Here we start from where the previous book left off, at the border into Hungary, & continue through until the Iron Gates border between Rumania & Bulgaria. I immensely enjoyed 'A Time of Gifts', & this book is the perfect companion to it. It is a seamless mix between the world seen through the eager eyes of the nineteen-year-old Leigh Fermor, & a wealth of historical, geographical, linguisitc, & anthropological information, which must have taken most of the intervening decades for him to research. The one drawback of the book is the envy it is bound to createin the reader -- envy of his ability to take a journey such as thisin a time now past, & envy (for those who also try to write) at the magnificent prose with which he has captured his memories. Patrick Leigh-Fermor's placein the ranks of the great writers of travel literature is already firmly established, & this is surely one of his finest. If reading this book doesn't inspire you to embark on a journey of your own, then I can only suggest you read it again, only this time with your eyes open.
Magical - By: , 22 Jan 2001 I can only reiterate what the previous reviewer has written, you must read this book.
'Between the Woods & Water' is part twoin the triology recounting PL-F's walkin 1933 from Holland to Istanbul. This book is an utter delight, the author must rank as one of the greatest travel writers alive.
There is so much charm, poetry & delight within these pages that it would be a tragic shame to miss out on them.
brilliant follow up to a time of gifts - By: , 27 Dec 1999 To enhance the wanderlust yet againin a similar fashion to that seenin "A Time of Gifts" would take an author of great integrity & ability - Leigh Fermor manages once again. Possibly the best travel writer of the 20thC. PLF takes us on not only a journey but also on an adventure in philosophy, history & art. YOU MUST READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!
