A quick heads-up for Wainwright fans with the news that a
new BBC Book paperback called simply Wainwright is due out on
Thursday 28 July.
The
book, written by Martin Wainwright - no relation - is an accompanying
volume to the Beeb's successful four-part series 'Wainwright Walks'
which was broadcast on BBC2 in March 2007 with a second series due in
late summer.
Most OMers will know Alfred Wainwright as the man who
painstakingly put together a series of hand-written and
hand-illustrated guidebooks to the Lake District as well as
conceiving of the Coast to Coast walk and writing a classic guide to
the Pennine Way.
Three Parts
The BBC book is in three parts, the first is a warts and all look
at Wainwright's progression from the Lancashire mills to being the
doyen of Lakeland walking. The second is a Wainwrightian look at the
Lake District itself and finally the third part is a selection of
nine classic Lake District walks.
If you've always suspected the man of being a little eccentric,
the book will confirm your suspicions. Before starting on his
Pictorial Guides to the Lakes, for example, he calculated that it
would take him 13 years to complete the series by drawing and writing
at the rate of one page a day. The drawings of each hill being based
on a single photograph taken on solo wanderings on the fells.
What does it tell us? That Wainwright was as human and fallible as
anyone else and a bit of a loner with it. I guess whether that
matters to you depends on whether you view the man as a genius or the
originator of a writing style that's blighted guide books ever since,
the choice is, of course, yours.
As for the rest of the book, there's a ramble through the Lakes
with an eye on the Pictorial Guides and then a selection of ten
Lakeland walks that you'll want to do in conjunction with an OS map
and, probably, one of the man's guides as well.
One for fans who want to know a little more about their hero, but
it's elevated from ordinariness by consistently lovely photography
from a selection of landscape photographers including Wainwright's
old collaborator Derry Brabs.
'Wainwright - The Man Who Loved The Lakes' is published on 28 July
by BBC Books, price is £16.99 and you can find more information
at www.eburypublishing.co.uk
