Jim Perrin (born 30 March 1947), is an English

rock climber Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically an ...

and

travel writer The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern per ...

Biography

Jim Perrin was born Ernest James Perrin in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, to a family of

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

descent. His father played rugby league for

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

in the late 1930s. As a writer, Perrin has made regular contributions on travel, mountaineering, literature, art, and the environment to a number of newspapers and climbing magazines, and continues to do so as a country diarist for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' and a columnist in '' The Great Outdoors'' magazine. As a climber, he has developed many new routes, particularly on the

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

gritstone outcrops, in

North Wales North Wales ( cy, Gogledd Cymru) is a region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders Mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdonia N ...

and on the sea cliffs of Pembrokeshire, as well as making solo ascents of a number of difficult established routes, and also free ascents of previously aid-assisted climbs in

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

and

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

. For many years he has contributed mountaineering obituaries for ''The Guardian'' (for example, on Patrick Monkhouse, Lord Hunt, Sir

Jack Longland Sir John Laurence Longland (26 June 1905 – 29 November 1993) was an educator, mountain climber, and broadcaster. After a brilliant student career Longland became a don at Durham University in the 1930s. He formed a lifelong concern for the we ...

, Sir

Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reache ...

, Brede Arkless, John Streetly, David Cox, Kevin FitzGerald, Robin Hodgkin, and others), and also for ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

''. He also wrote many essays for ''The Daily Telegraph'' travel supplement, most of which are collected in ''Travels with the Flea''.

Awards

Perrin has twice won the

Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature is an annual prize of £3,000 awarded by the Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust to an author or authors for "an original work which has made an outstanding contribution to mountain literature". The pr ...

, first for ''Menlove'' (1985), his biography of

John Menlove Edwards John Menlove Edwards was born at Ainsdale, near Liverpool, England, on 18 June 1910, the son of a politically radical vicar, George Zachery Edwards, and his wife Helen. His father's cousin was Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral. John M ...

, and again as joint winner (alongside Andy Cave's ''Learning to Breathe'') for ''The Villain'' (2005), a biography of

Don Whillans Donald Desbrow Whillans (18 May 1933 – 4 August 1985) was an English rock climber and mountaineer. He climbed with Joe Brown and Chris Bonington on many new routes, and was considered the technical equal of both. Early life Born and brought ...

.List of previous Boardman Tasker prize winners
Several of his other books have been shortlisted for this award. He has won the Mountaineering History Prize at Banff Mountain Book Festival for ''The Villain'' (2005), and the Mountaineering Literature Prize for ''The Climbing Essays'' (2006), which was also short-listed for the

Wales Book of the Year The Wales Book of the Year is a Welsh literary award given annually to the best Welsh and English language works in the fields of fiction and literary criticism by Welsh or Welsh interest authors. Established in 1992, the awards are currently ad ...

Award. His ''Shipton and Tilman: The Great Decade of Himalayan Mountaineering'' won the Kekoo Naoroji Prize for Himalayan Literature in 2014. He is a Fellow of the Welsh Academy,The Welsh Academy
/ref> an Honorary Fellow of Bangor University.

Bibliography

Below is a partial list of books by Perrin listed by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

as in print (on 7 November 2016): * ''Mirrors in the Cliffs'' (ed.) (1983), Diadem * ''H.W. Tilman: The Seven Mountain-Travel Books'' (1985), Diadem, edited and introduced * ''Eric Shipton: The Six Mountain-Travel Books'' (1985), Diadem, edited and introduced * ''Spirits of Place'' (1997), Gomer Press * ''Visions of Snowdonia'' (1997),

BBC Publications #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

* ''River Map'' (2001, 2nd edition 2002), Gomer Press * ''Travels with the Flea... and Other Eccentric Journeys'' (2001, second edition 2002), Neil Wilson Publishing * ''The Villain: The Life of Don Whillans'' (2005), Hutchinson * ''The Climbing Essays'' (2006), Neil Wilson Publishing * ''West: A Journey through the Landscapes of Loss'' (2010),

Atlantic Books Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel '' The White Tiger'', which r ...

* ''Snowdon: The Story of a Welsh Mountain'' (2012), Gomer Press * ''Shipton and Tilman: The Great Decade of Himalayan Exploration'' (2013), Hutchinson * ''A Snow Goose, and other utopian fictions'' (2013), Cinnamon Press * ''A William Condry Reader'' (ed.) (2015), Gomer Press * ''The Hills of Wales'' (2016), Gomer Press The following are out of print: * ''Menlove: Life of John Menlove Edwards'' (1985), Gollancz (second edition, 1993, Ernest Press) * ''On and Off the Rocks'' (1986), Gollancz * ''Yes, To Dance '' (1990), Oxford Illustrated Press

References

External links

Jim Perrin at The Guardian

Interview by David Roberts
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perrin, Jim 1947 births Living people Sportspeople from Manchester British rock climbers British travel writers Boardman Tasker Prize winners English male non-fiction writers 20th-century English male writers English non-fiction outdoors writers