The latest addition to my website is Lawrence Durrell‘s The Dark Labyrinth, originally published as Cefalù. It tells the story of a group of English people on a cruise in the Mediterranean and, in particular, their visit to a (fictional) labyrinth at (the fictitious) Cefalù. We start with one of their number – a poet and antiquarian called Lord Graecen – who is telling his friend Sir Juan Angelos, the discoverer of a temple in the labyrinth, about a disaster in the labyrinth, leaving the rest of the party trapped inside, with apparently, only Graecen able to escape. We then learn the stories of some of the participants in the expedition, including John Baird who worked with a Greek partisan group in the labyrinth during the war, a painter called Campion and an expert on the occult and former spiritualist, called Olaf Fearmax. Durrell tells us their stories, of the cruise and of the expedition and what happens to the trapped people, who were separated after the rock fall. It is a fine story and Durrell makes the connection with the Minotaur story of Greek legend.
Interested in the obvious connection between Baird and Patrick Leigh Fermor, his psychoanalysis by Hogarth, etc.
Indeed, Baird seems clearly to be based on Leigh-Fermor though I do not know much more about this