Rather than go to university in 1933, at the age of "18 and three-quarters", he set out in December that year to walk from the Hook of Holland to what he insisted on calling Constantinople, or even Byzantium [Istanbul]. There was no hurry, he wrote 65 years later in an article for the London Magazine. His journey took him "south-east through the snow into Germany, then up the Rhine and eastwards down the Danube... in Hungary I borrowed a horse, then plunged into Transylvania; from Romania, on into Bulgaria". At New Year, 1935, he crossed the Turkish border at Adrianople and reached his destination.

The European trek was undertaken with a book in mind – he was inspired by George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London – but 40 years would pass before Paddy published the first volume of his projected trilogy on the adventure. Asked why it took so long, he shot back: "Laziness and timidity." A Time of Gifts (1977) is not only a great travel book (a term he disliked), but one of the wonders of modern literature.' The Guardian

First edition; 8vo (225 x 150 mm); photographic frontispiece portrait of the author, engraved map, previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown; publisher's blue pictorial cloth gilt, pictorial dust-jacket, some wear to the extremities of the dust-jacket, faded; overall a very good copy.