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1934: Tenebrae in Slovakia, Easter in Hungary

Tradition and Sanity

One of the finest English stylists of the last century, and certainly one of the most dashing heroes of World War II, was the adventuresome and long-lived Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915–2011). Well before his association with the military, he decided in 1933, as an eighteen-year-old dropout, to walk across Europe, starting in Holland and ending in Istanbul. The three books he wrote decades later about the experience, drawing from diaries and notes made at the time, make for extraordinary reading: A Time of Gifts (1977), Between the Woods and the Water (1986), and the posthumously released The Broken Road (2013). Here is not the place to say why I love them so much, but perhaps when you’ve read or listened to me reading the following accounts of the Tenebrae in Slovakia and the Easter vigil in Hungary that Leigh Fermor witnessed in 1934—taken from the end of the first volume and the start of the second—you’ll quickly discover why I find him so delightful. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.traditionsanity.com/subscribe