From the French Abbey of St Wandrille to the abandoned & awesome Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey, the celebrated travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor studies the rigorous contemplative lives of the monks & the timeless beauty of their monastic surroundings. In his occasional retreats, the peaceful solitude & the calm enchantment of the monasteries was passed on as a kind of `supernatural windfall` which A Time to Keep Silence so effortlessly records.