Press release:
From J.W. Puttrell in the 1890s to Steve McClure in the 2000s, the Peak District has been a crucible of hard climbing. Welsh Rock and Lakeland Rock by Trevor Jones and Geoff Milburn were two parts of a trilogy, whilst the long-awaited conclusion – the story of The Peak – has become one of the greatest prizes in climbing writing.
The celebrated High Peak, by Eric Byne and Geoffrey Sutton, covered events to the early 1960s. Since then, of course, climbing in The Peak has changed almost out of recognition.
Although the sheer labour of cataloguing Peak climbing history is probably too great for any one person, inevitably people tried. For 10 years, the late Giles Barker painstakingly compiled a series of interviews with leading climbers. These formed the substance of a book which he entitled Peak Performance. Sadly Giles was killed in a caving accident in 1992. His manuscript, which reached the 1980s, remained incomplete.
In late 2010 Phil Kelly received permission from the Barker family to complete and to extend Giles’s manuscript into the 2000s. Assembling a team of writers including Percy Bishton, Chris Hardy, Graham Hoey, Mark Pretty, Jon Read, Mick Ward, Andi Turner and others, this team are finally bringing Giles’s dream to fruition.
Peak Performance will be published in October 2013. It will feature the exploits of climbers such as J.W. Puttrell, H.M. Kelly, Frank Elliott, Arthur Birtwistle, Peter Harding, Joe Brown, Don Whillans, John Allen, Steve Bancroft, Jerry Moffatt, Ben Moon, Johnny Dawes, Steve McClure... and many, many more, and also provides many accounts of the climbing scene, the routes, the competition and the partnerships; often in their own words.
Inevitably, of course, the cutting edge routes of one generation become feasible for later generations. For active and armchair climbers alike, reading the genesis of their favourite grit and limestone routes will prove utterly fascinating.
As Giles Barker contributed the major part of Peak Performance, it is only fair that profits from Peak Performance will be divided equally between the Barker family and the Mountain Heritage Trust. Everybody who has pledged support, whether by contributing chapters, photographs, interviews or research material is doing so entirely free of charge. In this way, Giles’s memory will be honoured and thousands of climbers will benefit from his 10 years of rigorous research.
The project is proud to have Ron Fawcett as its patron.
For further information please contact Phil Kelly on phil@philkelly.com or 07967-000339
