Monthly Archives: May 2014

Pearls before swine?

It may be imagined how irked Jim Perrin was to read the adverse comments which followed, one by one, his latest Guardian Country Diary entry about wild boar in Ariège, 23/05/2014. How, we wonder, could he have restrained himself from writing his usual retaliatory remarks? ‘Dendros’, in particular, was ironically critical — and, to judge by the response, apparently woundingly — of the author’s style.

Such criticism was not to be borne; could not be tolerated without redress; and as, presumably, the irritation mounted this most precious author — perceiving the words in his ‘lyrically-lovely-mode’ of writing, to be so many Pearls Before Swine of a different kind — found the impulse to respond to be irresistible… This is a logical interpretation. Continue reading

Notes concerning lung cancer, with reference to Jim Perrin’s claim to have the disease

The following notes have been contributed by one of our many ‘Well-wishers’, and in view of what we have always considered to be Jim Perrin’s spurious claims we are particularly grateful for their professional elucidation. We feel that the public, to whom Jim Perrin has long-peddled this extraordinary untruth for his own gain, will be interested to learn the facts as outlined below… 

‘Lung cancer is a dreadful disease, and even with some recent improvements in treatment the prognosis is dismal. In the United States lung cancer is 15% of cancer diagnoses, but 29% of cancer deaths. In the early 20th century it was a rare disease, but it increased across the century and doubled between 1950 and 1970. With the reduction in smoking the incidence in men is now falling, but it continues to rise in women. In some countries lung cancer has overtaken breast cancer as the major cancer cause of death in women. Continue reading

More details concerning Jim Perrin’s (fictional?) cancer

‘Madryn’*, the latest reviewer of West on Amazon, 19/03/2014, wrote in their final, and telling sentence:  ‘West strikes me as less an expression of the sublime than the egotistical.’ and quite reasonably highlighted their scepticism as to the author’s story of his Terminal Lung Cancer; although Kirstie McCrum, in an interview with Jim Perrin in the Western Mail, 11/08/2010, had stated with authority: ‘Now suffering with cancer himself… After Jacquetta died he was also diagnosed with terminal cancer. Refusing treatment Jim is accepting of his illness saying:  “Jacquetta was desperate to go on living, but I don’t think I’ve ever been that desperate”.’ ** Continue reading