At last, after years of ignoring Jim Perrin and refusing to rise to the insults and irritations emanating from that quarter, Jim Curran, albeit reluctantly, had sought legal advice.  A course of action was decided upon and a barrister retained: a date was fixed for the court.

The author Jim Perrin, by his overweening arrogance and deeply-rooted malice (for as such it may surely be described) was the sole cause of this dispute, yet fortuitously he was upheld by his cronies; the publishers who had printed his libel. They, at first making light of any suggestion of culpability, tried to imply that the remarks which their man had so offensively made were intended as jest, and they offered ridiculously small amounts to Jim Curran, with no apology, thinking he could easily be ‘bought off’. They had, of course, closed ranks around their favoured one and were practising their brinkmanship. Continue reading →

After an eleven year hiatus an article was published in Climber and Hillwalker which contained seriously offensive material concerning Jim Curran: the author of this insulting article was Jim Perrin! How strange that he seemed to have set up a vendetta against his former fellow-climber; at the least, to have been busily conducting what could only be described as a smear campaign.

Did he feel guilt (or any remorse, we wonder) about what obviously had been his cavalier handling of that climb in 1979? Perhaps he was aware that although, so far, Jim Curran had not publicly discussed it he might yet write about it, giving his accurate account of what had taken place that day on Mewsford Point: did Jim Perrin — as attack is thought by some to be the best form of defence — decide to write the highly questionable (and, as it turned out, actually libellous) article to pre-empt any such account?

We mentioned in our earlier posting that Jim Perrin had not, until then, written anything negative about that climb, nor had he ever indicated previously that there had been anything of which to complain… Continue reading →