A William Condry Reader

by Jim Perrin

‘As time passes I become ever more convinced that it is in the wild places that we have the best hope of finding such little sanity as survives in the world.’ So wrote William Condry, the pre-eminent writer on the natural history of Wales, whose Country Diary appeared in The Guardian for over forty years and whose influence on the present generation of nature writers continues to be felt. One of those is Jim Perrin, and this volume is his selection of some of William Condry’s best published work, reminding us of the attentiveness, appreciation and concern for the land which underpinned so much of Condry’s work in the field, its focus local and its perspective universal. A modest and affable man, he was, as Perrin concludes in his illuminating introduction, one of the twentieth-century masters of nature writing.

222 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2015

About the author

Jim Perrin is an English rock climber and travel writer.
Perrin has lived in Wales since the age of 17. Before turning to writing, he worked in Cwm Pennant as a shepherd. As a writer, he has made regular contributions to a number of newspapers and climbing magazines. As a climber, he has developed new routes, as well as making solo ascents of a number of established routes.

He has won the Boardman Tasker prize twice, first for Menlove (1985), his biography of John Menlove Edwards, and again as a joint winner (alongside Andy Cave's Learning to Breathe) for The Villain (2005), a biography of Don Whillans.

For many years he has contributed mountaineering obituaries for The Guardian (see, for example, the recent contribution on Brede Arkless). He has six children by six different partners, one, Will, also a talented climber, took his own life aged 24.