UKC

WHO'S WHO IN BRITISH CLIMBING
Colin Wells

Who’s Who in British Climbing contains nearly 700 mini-biographies of climbers – the
romantics, eccentrics and buffoons that have made British climbing what it is: dissolute and
hungover most of the time, with the odd unexpected burst of brilliance.
They form a world-class cast of eccentrics ranging from the most virtuous to the most
hedonistically barbarous characters one could ever hope to meet.
They're all in there:
Geoffrey Winthrop Young, JW Puttrell, Abraham Bros.
Brown and Whillans; Boardman and Tasker, Fawcett and Livesey; Moffatt and Moon
Dorothy Pilley, Lizzie le Blond, Ruth Jenkins, Katherine Schirrmacher
Chris Bonington, Alan Hinkes, Bill Tilman, Eric Shipton
Andy Kirkpatrick, Ian Parnell, Kenton Cool, Mick Fowler
The Browns (Dave, Joe, Les, Graham, and Wullie)
The Joneses (Chris, Roger Baxter, 'Crag', Eric, Humphrey Owen and OG)
The Smiths (Albert, George, 'Speedy', Malcolm and Walter Parry Haskett)
Steve McClure, Richard Simpson, Lucy Creamer
John Redhead, John Dunne, Johnny Dawes
and literally hundreds of others!

Who’s Who in British Climbing is available now.
To order your copy please go to: http://www.theclimbingcompany.net

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:

Go on then:

Nadin, Whillans, Livesey, Tasker
Boardman, Brown, Moon? Dunne
? Hasket-Smith?, Tilman, Harris, Fawcett
Bonners, MacInnes, ? Macintyre, Fowler, Haston


Chris

In reply to Chris Craggs: Not bad Chris, but you've dropped one very easy rock climbing/bouldering mark, your ancient history's not too bad but could be better and you've confused a climber's climber with a household name – too much time spent writing guidebooks and doing new routes and not enough reading mags and browsing websites. See me after class for pull-ups and deadhangs.

In reply to Chris Craggs: The second ? is Moffatt

Andy F

In reply to andy farnell: Seems like a good game... the first person to email us with all 20 correct full names of the climbers on the front cover will win a copy of Who's Who in British Climbing signed by the author.

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:

When I click on the buy now button, I get an error message.

Also - 700 climbers, and yet not a single woman made it on to the cover??? hrummmppphhh...

In reply to tlm: Sorry about that, you're the first person to have reported a problem, we'll look into it. Until it's sorted you could either send a cheque or give us a ring – 01298 72801. They'll also be on sale at the Paul Nunn lecture in Sheffield tonight (Wednesday 1st October) – when we'll be donating 10% of sales to the Paul Nunn Fund.

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:
[...]

Robin? :-/

In reply to petestack:Robin Clark Smith (1938-1961)
Robin the Batman
Along with John Cunningham», Jimmy Marshall» and Dave Cuthbertson», Robin Smith arguably completes a quartet of the most outstanding climbers of the post-war Scottish scene. This is all the more remarkable given his tragically short climbing career – just six years of blistering achievement before it was snuffed out on a foreign snow-field.
Robin's entry runs to nearly four pages.

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:

Hope that's not a cut-and-paste from the book...

In reply to petestack: Yes it is; here's another extract from Robin's entry:
Most of Smith’s contemporaries were convinced he was headed for a global reputation. But then, in 1962, it was suddenly all over. The bright young hope, roped to Wilfrid Noyce» – a figure from a previous generation of British climbing luminaries – fell to his death on Peak Garmo in the Pamirs, when one of them slipped on easy ground pulling them both over the edge of a 4,000ft void.
Waiting in the wings was ‘the second best climber from Edinburgh’, former Smith apprentice Dougal Haston. He emerged from his rival’s shadow, and began his rapid rise to climbing and public prominence.
What they said: ‘His death cut short a career of richer promise than perhaps any other figure in British postwar mountaineering possessed.’ Jim Perrin encapsulates the consensus estimation of Smith’s stature.
In a book that runs to 600 pages and contains biographies of 700 climbers there's bound to be the occasional typo like this - thanks for pointing it out, we'll correct it in the second edition.

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:

The one that will have at least one girly on the cover?!

In reply to tlm: That's the one! Maybe Glenda will be the chosen one...
Glenda Huxter
An easy day for a lady
In the early 21st century everyone knows that Girls are Best at Everything. Girls out-perform boys at school. Girls multi-task, while guys flounder with changing gear and steering simultaneously. Girls survive longer when flung from the Titanic, etc etc. The list is endless.
However, until recently many male rock climbers were still under the smug illusion that their sport provided a sanctuary from this overwhelming post-modern orthodoxy: that men are effectively redundant. But then Glenda Huxter came along. If proof were ever needed that women are probably the future of rock climbing as well as everything else, then Huxter’s on-sight lead of The Bells! The Bells! (E7 6b), on Gogarth’s worryingly insecure North Stack Wall, was probably it. On-sights of Wreath of Deadly Nightshade (E7 6b) confirmed this wasn’t a flash in the pan, and when Huxter produced the entirely new I am Curious Yellow (E6 6b) on The Range at Gogarth, even the most optimistic misogynists must have felt a shudder go down their mean-minded spines.
(Continued...)
What she said: ‘Well, my most recurrent thought was, “F***ing hell, I’m going to die”’ Glenda answers the question: ‘What did you think about on The Bells! The Bells!?’

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:
[...]

OK, thanks for that, I'm really into climbing history and you're tempting me...

(To me, it's not just about the line, but who did it when and in what style. So I like to know that my route was put up by Clough, Marshall, Murray or whoever because that's part of its ambience/character and tells me something about it before I even set foot on it.)

In reply to petestack: You're not wrong – that's one of the amazing powers of climbing – on special routes you can sense the character of the first ascentionst.
Ian Clough (1937-1970)
They didnae send him hameward tae think again
You might have been forgiven for thinking Ian Clough was having a laugh. Here he was, a Yorkshire tyke doing his National Service at RAF Kinloss, and doing the most unspeakable things to virgin Scottish gullies. And in full sight of the natives. For a time, Clough was arguably the most unpopular man in the Highlands since the Duke of Cumberland. What could he have done to deserve this?
(Continued...)

William Bill Hutchison Murray (1913-1996)
More monk than monkey
Mystical, meditative, mountaineer. Three words that sum up Bill Murray’s life. The Glasgow born climber-writer sprang to public attention in 1947 on the back of his famous book of flowery reminiscences of Caledonian climbing, Mountaineering in Scotland. This detailed an heroic era of the 1930s when Murray, along with other young well-to-do Edinburgh accomplices, wrested Scottish climbing from the moribund clutches of the crusty SMC and projected it to new heights of difficulty. Highlights of the Murray winter career include Garrick’s Shelf (IV,4; 1937), Deep Cut Chimney (IV, 4; 1939), and Twisting Gully (III,4; 1946), while in what passes for summer conditions in Scotland he and his companions made the first ascent of Clachaig Gully (Severe) as well as repeats of the hardest rock routes of the day on Ben Nevis. But it is arguably as a writer, conservationist and mountaineering philosopher that Murray’s influence remains strongest.
(Continued...)

James Jimmy Marshall (1930-)
The architect of modern Scottish climbing
In one legendary week on Ben Nevis in 1960 Jimmy Marshall and Robin Smith» advanced Scottish winter climbing a full ten years. On consecutive days they climbed six first winter ascents, including the mini Alpine-route Orion Face Direct (V, 5), while also making the second ascent of Point Five Gully (V, 5) for good measure. The fact they achieved all this by cutting steps up the snow and ice appears, from the remove of the 21st century, to be almost unbelievable. Marshall’s skill was such that he could lead routes almost faster than some of his talented seconds could follow.
(Continued...)

In reply to andy farnell: There're still a few hours left to enter the competition to win a signed copy of Who's Who in British Climbing
No one so far has got all the right answers so here are a few hints:
The Man with the Child in his Arms is Albert Frederick Fred Mummery
The man emerging from a hole in the ground has a lecture series and charity fund named in his honour.
The man who looks like Ben Turpin is Haskett Smith, but his full name is required.
Go to http://www.theclimbingcompany.net to see a bigger version of the front cover.
The competition will end when this thread is removed at about 5pm this afternoon. The full answers will be on the website tomorrow.
Good luck!

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net:

Doesn't Dougal Haston look like Bobby Fischer?

jcm

In reply to johncoxmysteriously: Not as much as Walter Parry Haskett Smith looks like Ben Turpin. Oops, what a giveaway!

In reply to theclimbingcompany.net: The results of the cover stars naming competition are now on the website: just click on a face and you'll be taken to the first paragraph of their entry.
http://www.theclimbingcompany.net