It was on The Guardian thread after a review by Sir Andrew Motion of the book West, 24/07/10, that a commentator, ‘Melangell’ became extremely animated!  (And we may say straightaway, and pin our colours to the mast, that we are completely convinced that ‘she’, ‘Melangell’, is an alias used by Jim Perrin… )

We have said before that it had never occurred to us to have a site of our own. If ‘Melangell’ (JP?) had not been so determined to ‘put us right’ at every turn or to so explicitly express Jim Perrin’s views; if she had not been so virulent in her insinuations or had not caused our first comment to be deleted, in all probability it would never have been created. We are now going to answer some of the comments that she — Jim Perrin — made.

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Some of the remarks were, plainly, silly:
‘Melangell’:   ‘When I visited Jacquetta in hospital within twenty-four hours of her death, none of her family were there, Jim’s was the only photograph by her bedside.’

The reason for the latter was that our sister had no idea when she left home that day for the hospital that she would be staying — never to return, and she had taken with her only her handbag. It was Jim Perrin, later, who, brought in his own photograph; and it is certain that he would not have taken her any others!

‘Melangell’:   At her funeral his were the only flowers on her coffin and he was the only person I saw weep.’
Ref. Jim Perrin: West, page 285.  ‘No-one had seemed to weep for her.’

Some were overtly threatening, and with an increasing use of emphasis:
‘Melangell’:    ‘Jim undertook never to write about her family though he has strong feelings on the matter.’
Ref. Jim Perrin:  West, page 6. ‘The guilt of those who neglected and exploited.’

‘Melangell’:    ‘… and I think was right to do so in view of the Pandora’s box this could open.’ Continue reading →

We had really no idea that our site would develop as it has, from that first exchange; but as each comment by Melangell was posted, with new and spiteful ‘edge’, we became more outraged. Although it was never our intention to become this far involved we were horrified by the lying repetition (as we saw it) and by the extra salacious material in Jim Perrin’s book West. Quite apart from the waspish comments posted on The Guardian by this ‘Melangell’ — a name we were convinced was an alias used by Jim Perrin, and irked by the censorship which we had experienced when our own honest and retaliatory comments were deleted, we decided on the advice of friends to create  our own site.  As we wrote in our introduction we had only one wish, which was ‘to set the record straight’.

From the beginning the ‘person to person’ style of ‘Melangell’ (who seemed to claim a preternatural knowledge of our family) led us to believe that this was, in essence, a pseudonymous correspondent and we were nearly certain that we knew the ‘author’ of these particular comments.  We said this in a comment of our own (ref. the comment thread following Sir Andrew Motion’s review, 24/07/2010) — it was denied — ‘not so’ said ‘Melangell’ (JP)? Continue reading →