Perrin Jim - The villain: a portrait of Don Whillans

THE VILLAIN

Jim Perrin is one of Britains most highly regarded travel writers and was one of the best British rock-climbers with many new routes, significant solo ascents and free ascents at the top standards of the day. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, Climber and TGO and he broadcasts regularly on radio. His biography, Menlove, was the first outright winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize, for which all of his subsequent books have been shortlisted. The Villain was joint winner of the 2005 Boardman Tasker Prize and winner of the Mountain History Award at the 2005 Banff Mountain Festival.

An extraordinarily rich and unsentimental vision... The genius of this exceptional biography is that it articulates both sides of Whillans character... It is by turns funny and tragic... This is a fine book. It was worth the wait. Climb

Captivating... For all the tales of great expeditions, there are as many of scandal and drunken debauchery, but thats how he wanted it. Its this mixture of natural ability and self-destructiveness which makes for such an entertaining read. Scotland on Sunday

Makes for gripping reading. Perrin has given Whillans the ultimate compliment of painting an honest portrait... His knowledge is simply unassailable... Perrin, in seeking to demolish the fictitious and construct a man out of the myth, has perversely, and wonderfully, created an enduring, breathtaking legend. Glasgow Herald

Detailed, definitive and finely written... A real life ripping yarn. Manchester Evening News

Probably the best biography written about a climber. Stevie Haston

A story worthy of the highest accolades a biographer can expect to receive. Ultimately, though, its the readers reward... Perrins masterwork. Mountain Gazette

Also by Jim Perrin

Menlove
Mirrors in the Cliffs
On and Off the Rocks
Yes, to Dance
Visions of Snowdonia
Spirits of Place
River Map
Travels with the Flea

The Life of Don Whillans

Jim Perrin

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Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781446409480

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Arrow Books in 2006

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Copyright Jim Perrin 2005

The right of Jim Perrin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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First published by Hutchinson in 2005

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ISBN 978 0099416722 (from Jan 2007)
ISBN 0 09 941672 7

Typeset in Caslon 540 by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

For Will Perrin

19802004

As gracious in his life as he was graceful on the rock

First Section

Don Whillans ( Ken Wilson)

Don on a donkey

Father and son on Blackpool beach, 1935

Don in the garden at Stanton Avenue

In Dons grandmothers backyard on Earl Street

In Ashop Clough, Kinder Scout

The Rock & Ice in the Wall End Barn, early 1950s

Sunday family rambles to Marple

Camping beneath the crags of Stoney Middleton in 1951

Elder Crack, Curbar Edge, 1951

Second ascent of Arthur Dolphins Birdlime Traverse, 1951

Llyn Dur Arddu, 1952

Don bathing

Early ascent of Suicide Wall, c. 1952

Browns Eliminate, Froggatt Edge, mid-1950s

First ascent of Crossover

First ascent of Centurion, 1956

Belshaw, Allen and Brown after the first ascent of The Corner, 1952

Allen, Chapman and Whillans at the Envers des Aiguilles, 1952

Don Whillans on Esso Extra at Stanage Edge

Capetown, 1957 Downes, Whillans, Cunningham

Don and Audrey, Froggatt Edge, 1958

First ascent of Sentinel Crack, 1959

Second Section

Whillans and Bonington at the top of the Central Pillar of Freney, 1961 ( Chris Bonington Picture Library)

Whillans and Bonington alpine-bound, 1962 ( Chris Bonington Picture Library)

Brian Nally on the North Face of the Eiger ( Chris Bonington Picture Library)

Annapurna South Face, 1970 Don belays Dougal Haston ( Chris Bonington Picture Library)

Don and Mike Thompson arrive at Camp Two on Annapurna ( F. Jack Jackson)

Torre Egger ( Leo Dickinson)

Mick Coffey on Torre Egger ( Leo Dickinson)

Making the headlines again, 1975 ( Daily Mail)

Don in the Red Sea ( F. Jack Jackson)

Gangotri 1981 Don meets a yogi

Doug Scotts 1983 Karakoram ensemble

Don and Bill Peascod Great Slab, Clogwyn Dur Arddu, May 1985 ( F. Jack Jackson)

Martin Crook and Ed Douglas on Matine at the Roaches ( Ray Wood)

Unless otherwise attributed, all photos are from the Audrey Whillans collection.

... your past... naturally has its share in all you are now meeting. But that part of the errors, desires and longings of your boyhood which is working in you is not what you remember and condemn. The unusual conditions of a lonely and helpless childhood are so difficult, so complicated, open to so many influences and at the same time so disengaged from all real connections with life that, where a vice enters into it, one may not without more ado simply call it vice. One must be so careful with names anyway; it is so often on the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort. And the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory; it is not the victory that is the great thing you think to have done... that great thing is that there was already something there which you could put in the place of that delusion, something true and real.