Product Description

Alfred Wainwright's unique hand-drawn and hand-written PICTORIAL GUIDES TO THE LAKELAND FELLS have been an inspiration to walkers for over forty years. Yet despite many bestselling books and three television series, Wainwright remained an intensely private person. With full access to Alfred Wainwright's private letters and unpublished material, Hunter Davies reveals a man more passionate, witty and generous than readers of his guides have come to expect. His biography throws a new and surprising light on a man who has been an enigmatic and misunderstood person.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6144 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Hunter Davies is the author of over thirty books which include such modern classics as the authorised biography of The Beatles, The Glory Game and A Walk Around the Lakes. He has written several other walking books. He is also well known as a broadcaster and journalist and writes for the Independent, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and New Statesman. He is married to the novelist and biographer Margaret Forster and lives in London and the Lake District.

Customer Reviews

Ahhhhh the Lakes!
What a marvellous insight into the mysterious world of the real Alfred Wainwright. This book is well written and allows you to make up your own mind as to whether he was a recluse or just a very passionate man.

I did not agree with some of his ways but love what he did for the Lake District.

This book is is addictive and thorough

Wainwright remembered
From the Beatles to Wordsworth, from football to the Lakes, Hunter Davies has shown his writing skills to span a variety of subjects. To tackle a biography of Wainwright must have been a labour of love. On the surface A.W. was a very private man, who's whole focus for many years had been to explore the lakes and gather information and photographs, create maps and routes with which to compile the Lakeland Guides.

These Guides were a momentous undertaking and remains to this day, a definitive guide for all fell walkers. Hunter Davies was given access to much new information and also lots of assistance from Wainwright's wife betty. Under a lesser biographer, Wainwright's life could have become very matter of fact and one dimensional, but Hunter Davies cracks along at a good pace for 350 pages, is never boring, and gives the reader all he needs for a good biography. This book will appeal to the general reader as well as A.W. fans. A recommended read with some interesting photos as a bonus.

Wainwrights Biography
Hunter Davies, certainly got inside Wainwright and gave us insites we would have never thought about, Wainwright a very complex man, not a very good husband to his first wife, bordering on cruelty, not in the physical sense but still cruelty, but out of that marriage came the vast information he gives us about fell walking and the detailed maps he made. A very interesting book, never dull and any Wainwright fan would find it a worthwhile purchase and a good addition to your collection.