Tag Archives: Libel

Jac’s sisters write in response to the recent R J Ellory scandal with particular reference to Jim Perrin

The recent furore concerning abuse of the internet by ill-intentioned, deceitful and dishonest authors is daily growing in momentum.

Jeremy Duns’ research by which he uncovered the scandal of the behaviour of crime-writer, R J Ellory, and which he has now made public, clearly resonates with many other authors and readers, including ourselves, as is shown by the number of articles (and following comments) on the subject.

In the course of our posts on ‘jacssisters’, we have given our own opinion that one of The Guardian country diarists, Jim Perrin, is someone who practises these deceits; and we have noted several names we believe he has used as aliases — possibly ‘hi-jacked’ — or even  perhaps ‘borrowed’ from friends or acquiescent acquaintances.

From July 2010 we were attacked by what, we have no doubt, were the pseudonymous postings of ‘Melangell’ (JP?)* on The Guardian thread which followed the review by Sir Andrew Motion of a questionable book by Jim Perrin; a book which contained many wicked lies about our sister Jac, (Jacquetta) — some of which were exceptionally distasteful. This was one of the reasons that we set up this site. Continue reading →

(Part 3) Did Roger Alton, a friend of Jim Perrin, back the wrong horse?

Roger Alton denied our family the chance to refute the claims which Jim Perrin had made about our sister in an article in The Observer. The author’s assertions were extraordinary:

‘ Jacquetta [Jac] my lover, wife and friend of 40 years’

‘A previous man in her life [we know very well to whom he refers] had BEATEN HER savagely about the head.’

(Of her cancer) ‘She had surgery — chances of surviving beyond a very few YEARS minimal.  In the event, MERCIFULLY, it would be only weeks.’  (Our capitals…)  He also wrote, how dared he do so, that he was with Jac when she died!

Jim Perrin’s article was full of lies and ‘implications’ and we were profoundly shocked as those who now read the truth in our posts will readily understand. Surely, anyone faced with such wicked lies about a beloved member of their own family — and so soon after they had died — would have felt equally distressed and would also have wished to disclaim them? Continue reading →

Jim Perrin loses a court case? (Well, no! The matter was settled ‘OUT of court’!)

In the 1990s Jim Perrin libelled a fellow climber (Jim Curran) so vilely, impugning his climbing credentials, that he was to be sued for it: a date was fixed for the trial.

Spectacularly, further damning evidence was produced against Jim Perrin and an offer was made in settlement — of many tens of thousands of pounds — within only days of that trial. Today the figure is enormous — then it was a fortune — a sum however which ‘luckily’ was covered by the insurers of the magazine that had published the libel of which Jim Perrin was guilty: he would, it seems, have the Luck of the Devil and, as we have written elsewhere, ‘he sailed away Scot-free’.

Nevertheless the details of this case are well known in the climbing community — and to us through close friends in that community: it is a brush with which he has been tarred ever since. He has learned though to be more circumspect in his writing and over the years has developed a unique style which we believe to be — and have described as — ‘Libelling libel-lessly ref. our post Jim Perrin writes libellously? and it may be observed that he uses this ‘style’ frequently, and to great malicious effect. Continue reading →