Jim PerrinClimber and writer Jim Perrin has been awarded an honorary fellowship by a Welsh university.

Jim Perrin

Perrin, author of The Villain, the biography of climbing bête noir Don Whillans, received the award at Bangor University for his services to mountaineering and writing. Griff Rhys Jones, who fronted the Mountain series recently on BBC TV, also received a fellowship.

Born in Manchester of Welsh ancestry, Perrin’s uncompromising writing on landscape and mountaineering has twice won him the Boardman Tasker prize: in 2005 for The Villain and for his biography of John Menlove Edwards 20 years earlier.

The fellowship was conferred by the university’s vice-chancellor, Prof Merfyn Jones. He said of Perrin: “The landscape of Wales speaks to him and through him and he has immersed himself in it.

“Indeed, Jim has described himself as an 'antediluvian and anarchic rock-jock … and also a writer’. That, by the way, is not quite the full quote."

Perrin’s views are strongly grounded in egalitarianism and meritocracy. He spoke at the commemorations of the Kinder Scout mass trespass in April last year, which marked the 75th anniversary of the arrest of Benny Rothman and his fellow ramblers who pushed for the right to walk unfettered on the high ground of the Peak District.

Earlier this year, Perrin was made a fellow of the Welsh Academy.

See also

Jim Perrin shortlisted for Wales book award

Memories of Kinder mark anniversary

Miliband courts Left at Kinder event