In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor

After his walk across Europe, Patrick Leigh Fermor lived and travelled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. In the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer in Albania and fought in Greece and Crete – living disguised as a shepherd in the mountains for two years organising resistance activities. He was awarded the DSO and CBE and a knighthood in the 2004 new Year Honours List. He died in 2011. The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire was brought up in Oxfordshire. In 1950 her husband Andrew, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, inherited estates in Yorkshire and Ireland, as well as Chatsworth, the family seat in Derbyshire, and Deborah became chatelaine and housekeeper of one of England`s greatest and best-loved houses. Following her husband`s death in 2004, she moved to a village on the Chatsworth estate. She died in 2014.