Ken Wilson
Publisher of mountaineering books who inspired climbers
KEN WILSON, who has died aged 75, was a publisher whose beautifully illustrated coffee-table guidebooks to British rock climbing helped to define mountaineering in this country as an adventurous and character-building activity.
Cantankerous, opinionated (and with a willingness to share his opinions generously), Wilson resisted the continental fashion for drilling bolts into the rock, which makes climbing safer but reduces it to mere “performance sport”.
“On real cliffs with real dangers,” he wrote, “one has to rapidly master the skill and judgment required to avoid accidents. One must find the route, assess the problems, make the moves while also placing reliable protection. In addition, the powerful aura and complexity of cliffs has to be faced, together with descent problems, benightment and bad weather.” To older climbers, he was the guardian of the soul of mountaineering.
He certainly took the role seriously and would barrack climbers if he felt they had somehow offended against the British climbing ethic. Even journalists writing about climbing were not safe: they would receive phone calls despairing of the publicity given towards “record seekers” on Everest, while the noteworthy deeds of “real climbers” went ignored.
His brusque approach did not always win him friends. One climber recalled that he had the telephone manner of Stalin, while an American publisher once prefaced a lengthy fax with a request to “read it all, and then have a glass of wine before replying.”
Wilson edited Mountain magazine from 1969 to 1978 and later founded two publishing houses – Diadem and Baton Wicks – under whose umbrellas he produced a series of books including The Games Climbers Play and the
hardback series, Classic Rock, Hard Rock and Extreme Rock, which inspired a generation of climbers.
Each chapter in the trilogy focused on a particular ascent. Many of the route descriptions were written by the original mountaineer, with each climb put in its historical and geological context, recalling the original climbers, often in woollen clothing and using hemp ropes, who went before.
Wilson himself climbed all his life – although never at the top level – and could be spotted attired in antique clothing and equipment that looked as if it belonged in a museum.
The son of a stationery salesman, Kenneth John Wilson was born in Birmingham on February 7 1941. No places were available for him at the local grammar school after he passed his 11-plus so he was educated free of charge at the fee-paying Solihull School. He later studied architecture but gave it up after three years, turning instead to photography. He went on to work in London for the architectural photographer Henk Snoek.
He first got into mountaineering aged 13 via the Scouts, and it remained his passion for the rest of his life. In 1969 he took over
Mountaincraft magazine and turned it into Mountain. His big break in publishing came with a bestselling collection of essays by Richard Gilbert, edited by Wilson, The Big Walks: Challenging Mountain Walks and Scrambles in the British Isles (1989). Wilson later sold Diadem to Hodder & Stoughton, staying on as a publisher. Following the Hodder/Headline merger he left in 1993, with his catalogue, and with severance pay that he used to set up Baton Wicks.
He also bought the rights to foreign works such as Hermann Buhl’s Nanga
Parbat and Lionel Terray’s Conquistadors of the Useless and kept classic works in print while also ensuring that contemporary climbers found a publisher.
Last year the Boardman Tasker Prize gave him a lifetime achievement award.
He is survived by his wife Gloria, whom he married in 1971, and by two sons. Ken Wilson, born February 7 1941, died June 11 2016