John Menlove Edwards

John Menlove Edwards (18 June 1910 – 2 February 1958) was one of the leading British rock climbers of the interwar period and wrote poetry based on his experiences of climbing.

He was born near Southport, the son of a vicar. He attended Fettes College and studied medicine at Liverpool University, where he became a child psychiatrist. During the Second World War he was a conscientious objector.

Edwards was homosexual and the only person he ever claimed as the love of his life was Wilfrid Noyce. After an unhappy personal life, which made him vulnerable to bouts of depression, he committed suicide with a cyanide capsule in 1958.

Climbing

Edwards learnt to climb at Helsby Crag in Cheshire and at age 21 made the first free ascent of Scafell's Central Buttress.

Edwards' climbing style was described by Geoffrey Winthrop Young as "serpentine and as powerful as an anaconda coiling up loose or wet overhangs, I had the conviction that human adhesiveness in movement could go no further". He was happier climbing overhangs and loose rock than his contemporaries and predecessors meaning he could pioneer climbs in new areas. He made hundreds of first ascents including many of the now-classic rock routes on the crags of the Llanberis Pass in Snowdonia such as Flying Buttress, Spiral Stairs, Crackstone Rib, Nea and Brant.

As with other many other British climbers of his era he was passionately against the use of pitons.

Quotes

• "I grew up exuberant in body but with a nervy, craving mind. It was wanting something more, something tangible. It sought for reality intensely, always as if it were not there... But you see at once what I do. I climb."

See also

• Jim Perrin, Menlove, 1985, Gollancz (reprinted by The Ernest Press)