‘Magnificent … The prose has the glorious turbulence and boil of the first two books, and the youthful magic of his 'dream-odyssey’ ROBERT MACFARLANE, The Times

‘Vivid … full of fun, kindness, easy learning, sophistication and innocence … a gently fitting conclusion to his tumultuous masterpiece’ JAN MORRIS, Mail on Sunday

‘A major work … one of the masterpieces of the genre, indeed one of the masterworks of post-war English non-fiction’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, Guardian

‘Filled with brilliant evocations of [Patrick Leigh Fermor’s] life on the road … essential reading’ The Economist

A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water were the first two volumes in a projected trilogy that would describe the walk that Patrick Leigh Fermor undertook at the age of eighteen from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. ‘When are you going to finish Vol. III?’ was the cry from his fans; but although he wished he could, the words refused to come. The curious thing was that he had not only written an early draft of the last part of the walk, but that it predated the other two. It remains unfinished but The Broken Road - edited and introduced by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper - completes an extraordinary journey.