Excellent in every respect, and I can understand why the tale has been so long in the telling.
Towards the end, JP tells the apparently apocryphal story of Don in the Himalaya in 1972. DW was responding to a German's taunt a propos them beating England at soccer in the World Cup.
German says (apols for the 'Allo allo' bits)
"So, ve hav beat you at your national game, Ja?"
To which (the apochrypha says) Whillans replies "Yes, but we've beaten you twice at yours...."
Oh, how we clutched our sides.
BUT
Jim Perrin states that this must be crap as there was no World Cup in 1972.
Which is true. Yet, at the time that Whillans et al were in the Himalaya in 1972, West Germany beat England 3-1 at Wembley in Euro 72 (the first nail in Alf Ramsay's coffin). The famous Gunter Netzer game, and the first time England ever lost to the Germans at home.
That game was on 29th April 1972, which as I understand it, fits in nicely with the Himalaya exped.
Very good book despite this appalling historical error (LOL)- well worth a read.
I've just finished reading it too. You get a real (and quite depressing) sense of a man becoming detached from reality, and pretty much giving himself up to the shadows from his late 30's onwards. Jim talks about painting a picture of Whillans "warts and all", but really it's as sympathetic an account as you'd imagine could be possible.
Agree- sorry to bang on the soccer analogy (hate the game- I'm rugby) but Gazza just leaps to mind immediately.
So gifted in his youth, but no real friends (as opposed to acquaintances/ drinking mates/ climbing mates), and cast his talents to the four winds in the end.
Yes its a sympathetic account, and all the better because Jim Perrin came from the same background, yet you can't help feeling that inside a 'warts-and-all' bio of Don Whillans, there is a Joe Brown hagiography waiting to escape.
Yes, it's a fascinating account of one man's life that went sadly wrong. It's amazing how many climbers, like football players, who, somewhere along the line, hit the self destruct button. Jim has written a background piece to the book for next month's tgo, in the shops March 3. He'll also be speaking in the BMC/TGO lecture theatre at the OS Outdoor Show and signing copies of The Villain (the book, not the man) on the tgo stand afterwards.
"It's amazing how many climbers...hit the self destruct button"
Too true. Maybe it's the intensity of the sport or the oft-quoted association of drugs with climbing, but we know of several gifted climbers of our personal aquaintance who have ended up either 'in a sad place' or who have simply disappeared.
I'm only about partway through reading "The Villain". It seems to me that its more about the people who Whillans climbed with than the man himself, or maybe they reflect him.
I dunno, its late at night, and as I say, I haven't read all of it yet.
