Tag Archives: The Times Literary Supplement

(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 →

(Part 1) Former ‘Observer’ Editor Roger Alton replied to Jac’s Sisters about Jim Perrin

Within an opportunistically short time after our sister died in 2005, Jim Perrin wrote an article about her for the Observer and, we believe, plagiarised the title ‘Touching the Void’; Joe Simpson already had a book published — to much acclaim — and a film had been made of his book, using that title.

Readers might have thought that the feelings expressed in the article were ‘sensitive’, the author was ‘devastated’, his loss was ‘profound’. But wait… There Was a Book In It.

The truth is that Jim Perrin lied — we will not use the euphemism ‘economical with the truth’, and we knew that what we read in The  Observer was an adulterated blend of slight fact and flagrant fiction which the author had written as ‘autobiography’.

We contacted the editor, who then was Roger Alton, to ask that he would print our rebuttal; after all, as close sisters (and intimate friends) we knew the truth: our sister was not Jim Perrin’s ‘Lover, wife and friend of forty years’, and many of his other claims were wholly false or vile implication.  Continue reading →