Monthly Archives: October 2010

Jac’s accident at Jim Perrin’s house

scan20091We referred earlier to the accident which our sister had at Jim Perrin’s house in July 2003. This was certainly a pivotal point in her relationship with him. She described it to us shortly after it had happened and as we said: ‘Undoubtedly this injury to her ribs was extremely serious’.

We have wondered ever since why Jim Perrin, as a responsible adult, did not seek medical help for her: he had been a climber with presumably at least some rudimentary knowledge of impact damage. Is he medically trained? For all he knew her lung could have been punctured; she could have sustained other internal injuries. Surely, if she was as seriously hurt as he claimed in his book he should at least have asked for a paramedic, to assess and advise her. Continue reading →

Jim Perrin’s false colours?

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 →

Our response To Sir Andrew Motion’s review of ‘West’

This was the second of two comments which we originally posted on the The Independent site, following a review by Stevie Davies, 23/07/2010* — and, as before, we have decided to transfer it to our own site to achieve maximum coverage:

‘We have said previously of our sister Jac: ‘The dead have no right of reply,’ ref. our comment on The Guardian thread, 05/08/2010, and therefore we are trying whenever possible to set the record straight. Our dilemma is in part illustrated by what Sir Andrew Motion says of her in his Guardian review of West, 24/07/2010:  ‘The full power of the Jacquetta story… the more we learn about her…’  when in fact hardly anything of her true ‘self’ can be learned from this book — Jim Perrin’s account is so frequently fraudulent.’

Although by writing in this way we may seem unsympathetic to Jim Perrin it is because we know the truth; we know how it was, and this really is the point.  Our sister is used — she is (that is her mythologised relationship and her too early death) mainly the raison d’être for this literary work. Sir Andrew Motion’s astute comment: The stylistic overload with which she is associated…’ — simply cannot be equalled by anyone! Continue reading →