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The best sources of information on Tilman and his travels remain the fifteen books, long out of print individually but still available in omnibus form from Diadem Books Limited (London) and The Mountaineers (Seattle).
- H.W.Tilman - The Seven Mountain Travel Books
(ISBN 0-906371-21-X) - H.W.Tilman - The Eight Sailing/Mountain Exploration Books
(ISBN 0-906371-22-8)
There have been a number of attempts to provide biographical insight into Bill Tilman, among them the
official biographies by John Anderson (1980) and Tim Madge (1995). A television documentary produced by John Mead of HTV in 1981 also contained some interesting footage and interviews. Entitled 'No pay,
no prospects, not much pleasure', copies of this documentary are available from The News Library, HTV Studios, Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff, CF5 6XJ priced £20 sterling.
While these works were in the main well researched and executed, they still failed to fully capture the character which those of us who
had the good fortune to travel with him knew.
Those of you familiar with his books will recognise that the author had a masterly gift of understatement - an ability to dismiss with a
dry, humorous quip an event which other lesser writers would expand and embellish beyond all reason. This fact, and the reality that other writers benefited financially from more sensational accounts of lesser
journeys, was not lost on him.
However, appreciating the extent of his understatement of events may be difficult for those who did not have the experience of sailing
with him. In the pages below, as time permits, I will attempt to add some detail from personal experience, illustrated with a few photographs from my collection.
During the past three years, climber & documentary film maker Dave Glen has been hard at work on a TV/Home Video documentary charting Tilman's life, including formative climbing years with Eric
Shipton. Having been born and brought up in Kenya, with Tilman as a childhood hero, Dave is well placed indeed to make a serious job of getting to the core of the taciturn Tilman, and I have high hopes for the
outcome of this project. With a finished duration of 105 minutes in length, He has clearly invested significant time in this real labour of love.
Full details can be found at http://www.tilman.tv - and the video is slated for general release in April 2002.
These pages are still under construction, and will be updated at irregular intervals. If you're interested,
then please bookmark the page and check back every few weeks... I have very little spare time, but given the fact that I've already received an intriguing amount of feedback since starting this project, then this is
clearly going to become something of a hobby!
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To those of you who've written, and have yet to receive a reply - my apologies. I will get around to it as
time permits - I just didn't anticipate the level of interest this site would generate!
An article in the November 1998 issue of Yachting World which contained extracts of Tim Madge's recent
biography of Tilman triggered an exchange of e-mail correspondence with both the editorial team and another former crew member - Andrew Craig-Bennett who sailed with Baroque on the successful
circumnavigation of Spitzbergen. Andrew has contributed his own recollections of the 1974 trip which have now been included on this site. If any other former friends and crew out there feel like adding to
these pages, I'd be happy to take on the editorial role. As Andrew, and others, have remarked, Tilmans travel books seem more popular now than ever - and deservedly so.
This site has recently taken on something of an air of respectability with a mention in the April '99 issue of 'Classic Boat' magazine, thanks to a letter from Stephen Cash, one of my earlier visitors.
In fact, only one of the pictures on this site has ever been published before - the picture of Sea Breeze beset in ice, with Tilman in the foreground, appeared as the jacket illustration for 'In Mischief's Wake', published in 1972. It was a black and white copy print taken from a copy of one of my slides from the 1970 trip. I suspect it was inadvertently selected by the publisher from a set of Tilman's slides, not realising that it wasn't originally his. When I unwrapped the package containing a review copy of the book, I was surprised and delighted to find it on the cover. The same poor quality copy of the picture still appears in the current compilation edition of the sailing books. (If the publisher reads this and would like a decent colour copy - just drop me a line!!)
For those students of Tilman keen on seeing more letters, I've added a few more on the correspondence page. A brief scan through these may give the reader an idea of how some of the early drafts of the books might have looked prior to moderation by volunteer proofreaders. Cutting remarks about crew who didn't quite make the grade often had to be gently censored by Sandy Lee and others before the publishers would accept the final drafts for printing.
In September 2000, an e-mail to this site from Dave Glen in California introduced me to the latest and potentially the most painstakingly researched biography, currently in production. Covering both Tilman and Shipton, and scheduled for completion during 2001, this 4 hour, two part documentary will have been two years in the making. Watch these pages for updates on what looks to be a fascinating project.
Bob Comlay
April 2002
A word about the photographs on this site. All 1970 & 1971 colour photographs were originally shot on Kodachrome 25 or Ektachrome 64, recently transferred to Kodak Photo CD. Digital reprocessing of the PCD images has been carried out using the excellent Paint Shop Pro package. XAT image compression used to try and make the downloads less painful.
The photo of the author shown here on the right - before 30 years of the
twentieth century, exchanging an Arctic summer life for the mundane dreariness of IBM business travel took their toll - is courtesy of the trusty Leica of the late W.G. (Sandy) Lee of Lymington. A quiet master
of a great many crafts, Sandy was a devoted follower of 'the Major' and a true gentleman.
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