Saturday, August 17, 2013

Marianne Faithfull and Patrick Leigh Fermor

Marianne Faithfull is recovering after breaking a bone in her back - I wish her a swift recovery.

We saw in March that her grandfather Theodore was the inventor of the libido-liberating Frigidity Machine. It turns out that Major Faithfull (he was commissioned in the Veterinary Corps) was also briefly Patrick Leigh Fermor's headmaster.

Artemis Cooper's biography records that at one point the young Fermor was sent to Walsham Hall, a school for 'difficult children', presided over by the same Major Faithfull. It also says that nude country dancing formed part of the curriculum.

Whether this made the children any less difficult she does not say.

Now read about Patrick Leigh Fermor at Weedon and how his father-in-law gave his name to a Leicester suburb.

1 comment:

Philip Wilkinson said...

In the Introductory Letter to A Time of Gifts, Paddy refers to the headmaster as 'Major Truthfull'. I remember when I first read that years ago I thought, 'How odd. That name has an extra l, like Marianne Faithfull's'. But I didn't twig, of course, until I read the Cooper book.