 Lee thought of himself first and foremost as a poet, and the book reveals a poet's sensibility in its meticulous, distilled observations of the country and people he quickly came to love.Allen tries to find out whether Lee's evocative prose actually works as travel writing and Lee is revealed as an enigmatic, mercurial figure in the tradition of the wandering minstrel or troubadour, with a huge array of talents and an astonishing facility to charm.Benedict Allen follows Patrick Leigh Fermor's epic 1934 quest across Europe, tracing the inns, haystacks and castles the young adventurer stayed in as he foot-slogged his way through the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Romania towards Byzantium.