Tag Archives: Perrin’s Welsh Heritage

À propos ‘The name-dropping game’

An earlier post, The name-dropping game, was contributed by one of our well-wishers and we would like to expand upon it here:

The eminent scholar and most significant Welsh poet Professor Gwyn Thomas lectured at Bangor university when Jim Perrin, studying for a degree in English (achieving a 2:1, ref. ‘Phantom PhD?), became acquainted with him. In his book West the author wrote of having met Professor Thomas by chance at a garage and he recounted: ‘…that we talked…and no doubt brashly on my part for it was a new-found enthusiasm, and what right had I other than that of dialogue in his company? of the ninth-century poetry of the Heledd saga.  I remember with intense embarrassment how I delivered an extempore lecture some minutes in length and no doubt achingly crass and jejune [oh, how very humble, and so self-effacing!] on a particular line from the Stafell Gynddylan [Cynddylan’s Hall], one of the Heledd englynion.’ — and on, and on, and on… Continue reading →

Has Jim Perrin bitten the hand that feeds him?

We have shown in several of our posts that the author, Jim Perrin, has become well-embedded (actually quite literally, in some proved cases) in the Welsh literary community; see: Deaf ears in Wales?, not least by his false claims of Welsh heritage, see: Jim Perrin’s family background. In other posts we have recorded our belief, giving examples for comparison, that he has frequently used aliases to review or comment: he always flatters his own work to an inordinate degree. On occasion he praises the book of an author he ‘admires’ (or with whom he wishes to ingratiate himself) but it is more usually the case that he has used the anonymity which an alias provides to write disparagingly or, at worst, with thorough-going nastiness of the work of others — see: Llywarch’s poisoned pen.

‘Llywarch’s’ (JP?) risible one star review of Harriet Tuckey’s award-winning Everest, The First Ascent perfectly displays his spiteful nature and it can only be supposed that it was pure jealousy which prompted him to write it — his own book Shipton and Tilman was published in the same anniversary year, 2013, and was submitted to the same Boardman Tasker competition: perhaps he anticipated winning the award himself — he certainly reviewed it in glowing terms, see: ‘Llywarch’ on Amazon (where it will be seen that he has changed the name to ‘Tim Bartley’). Please read reviews or comments by ‘Jokerman’, ‘Llywarch’, ‘Melangell’ — on the ‘Guardian’ thread, ‘DrudwyBranwen’, and, most recently, ‘Tim Bartley’ to be reminded of the ‘evidence’ which backs our theory. There are other names we suspect but have not yet listed. Continue reading →

‘DrudwyBranwen’ (JP?) — again

We had not realised that The Guardian was a bilingual newspaper so we were surprised, as others may have been, that in response to Jim Perrin’s Country Diary entry for 28/03/2014 two comments were posted in Welsh. As there was no English translation this might have been seen as discrimination. Apart from the failure by The Guardian moderator to edit comments not in English (Jim Perrin’s Friends in High Places?) was it a ‘first’ to have comments in a language unlikely to be spoken by the majority of The Guardian’s readers?

And then there is the on-going question of Jim Perrin’s deceitful invention of multiple aliases: in any event, we believe — and have print-outs not yet shown on our site — that, by using pseudonyms, he has previously planted comments as double bluffs. Could this be another example? Who is ‘Welshbarbarian’? Who is ‘DrudwyBranwen’? Continue reading →