Henry Robin Romilly Fedden, CBE (26 November 1908 – 20 March 1977)[1] was an English writer, diplomat and mountaineer. He was the son of artist Romilly Fedden and novelist Katherine Waldo Douglas.[2]
Fedden was married to Renée (née Catzeflis); they had two daughters. He died in 1977.
Literary impact
Fedden had a wide variety of interests, which were reflected in his books. The best known of these are The Enchanted Mountains and Chantemesle. He also wrote several guidebooks for the National Trust. He was a dedicated mountaineer, a pursuit he took up in his late thirties.
Henry Miller disliked Fedden. He recalled their meetings in Athens when he later wrote bitterly of expatriate Englishmen in The Colossus of Maroussi. Miller "hated [Fedden's] stammer and his effete way of talking and ... framed a sharply satirical portrait of him in the Colossus," wrote Lawrence Durrell in a letter in 1977.[4] But Durrell recognised that 'behind the slight stoop and stutter that were part of Fedden's disarming charm, there was a sharply critical mind interrogating the cultures of Europe and the East, and [Durrell] looked up to him as he did to none of his other contemporaries' during the war years.[5]
Selected works
The Enchanted Mountains: A Quest in the Pyrenees
Alpine Ski Tour 1956
Chantemesle (1964; reissued by Eland Books in 2002)
The National Trust Guide
Treasures of the National Trust
The Continuing Purpose: History of the National Trust, Its Aims and Work