I watched agog last night as BBC4 broadcast a documentary on Alfred Wainwright, the well known and much loved curmudgeon and author of guidebooks to the Lake District and other places. He started life 100 years ago in Burnley and was a curiosity because he was born with red hair, a fact that led his mother to become so flustered when people came to look at him that she hid him in a drawer. Totally incredible! Alfred escaped the mills by dint of being a know-all at school and, aged 13, became an office boy at the town hall. A few years later he went on holiday to the Lake District and had some sort of epiphany atop a hill. When the chance came to join the Borough Treasurer's department in Kendal, he took it. In the early 1950s, and deeply unhappily married, he sat down one evening and planned to write a series of guides to the Lakeland fells, sticking at it night after night and walking for the whole of each weekend to gather further material for seven volumes. Fourteen or so years later the job was done. His studied neglect of the first Mrs Wainwright was shocking and after she walked out on him (heart-rending little tableaux of her trudging away with a suitcase and her dog on a lead having left him notes on how to change the bedding etc) he married a younger women. All of that was a bit regrettable. Nevertheless, what I liked was that he was extremely bloody-minded, stuck stubbornly to the task he had set himself and did it the way he wanted. The programme is on again tonight, I think. Worth the licence fee in itself.
Showing posts with label Northern heroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Northern heroes. Show all posts
Monday, February 26, 2007
His mother hid him in a drawer, you know
I watched agog last night as BBC4 broadcast a documentary on Alfred Wainwright, the well known and much loved curmudgeon and author of guidebooks to the Lake District and other places. He started life 100 years ago in Burnley and was a curiosity because he was born with red hair, a fact that led his mother to become so flustered when people came to look at him that she hid him in a drawer. Totally incredible! Alfred escaped the mills by dint of being a know-all at school and, aged 13, became an office boy at the town hall. A few years later he went on holiday to the Lake District and had some sort of epiphany atop a hill. When the chance came to join the Borough Treasurer's department in Kendal, he took it. In the early 1950s, and deeply unhappily married, he sat down one evening and planned to write a series of guides to the Lakeland fells, sticking at it night after night and walking for the whole of each weekend to gather further material for seven volumes. Fourteen or so years later the job was done. His studied neglect of the first Mrs Wainwright was shocking and after she walked out on him (heart-rending little tableaux of her trudging away with a suitcase and her dog on a lead having left him notes on how to change the bedding etc) he married a younger women. All of that was a bit regrettable. Nevertheless, what I liked was that he was extremely bloody-minded, stuck stubbornly to the task he had set himself and did it the way he wanted. The programme is on again tonight, I think. Worth the licence fee in itself.