Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor was born in London on 11 February 1915 to Muriel Eileen Taaffe Ambler Fermor and Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, Order of the British Empire and fellow of the Royal Society. Shortly after her son's birth, Muriel Leigh Fermor sailed to India to be reunited with her husband, who at the time was heading the Geological Survey of India. Because of the dangers of travel during World War I, Leigh Fermor's parents, like other colonials at the time, thought it best to leave their young son in England. His mother intended to return for him at the end of the war, not knowing that it would last for nearly four more years.
In "Introductory Letter to Xan Fielding," which prefaces A Time of Gifts (1977), Leigh Fermor described himself during his formative years as "a small farmer's child run wild." He spent a blissful early childhood with permissive foster parents on a Northamptonshire farm, where "I was allowed to do as I chose in everything." These "marvellously lawless years," he wrote, made him unfit for the constraints of any school, save for the rather unorthodox Salsham Hall, near Bury St.
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