Life
Alfred Wainwright was born in Blackburn, Lancashire into a family which was relatively poor, mostly because of his stonemason father's alcoholism. He did very well at school (first in nearly every subject) although he left at the age of 13. While most of his classmates were obliged to find employment in the local mills, Wainwright started work as an office boy in Blackburn Borough Engineer's Department. He spent several years studying at night school, gaining qualifications in accountancy which enabled him to further his career at Blackburn Borough Council. Even when a child Wainwright walked a great deal, up to 20 miles at a time; he showed a great interest in drawing and cartography, producing his own maps of England and his local area.
In 1930, at the age of 23, Wainwright saved up for a week's walking holiday in the Lake District with his cousin Eric Beardsall. They arrived in Windermere and climbed the nearby Orrest Head, where Wainwright saw his first view of the Lakeland fells. This moment marked the start of what he later described as his love affair with the Lake District. In 1931 he married his first wife, Ruth Holden, a mill worker, with whom he had a son Peter. In 1941 Wainwright moved closer to the fells when he took a job (and a pay cut) at the Borough Treasurer's office in Kendal, Westmorland. He lived and worked in the town for the rest of his life, serving as Borough Treasurer from 1948 until he retired in 1967. His first marriage ended when Ruth left three weeks before he retired and they divorced. In 1970 he married Betty McNally (1922–2008), a divorcee, who became his walking companion and who carried his ashes to Innominate Tarn at the top of Haystacks.
Wainwright was a lifelong Blackburn Rovers fan and a founder member of the Blackburn Rovers Supporters Club. He had no time for organised religion, and was agnostic.
Read more about this topic: Alfred Wainwright
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“To see self-sufficiency as the hallmark of maturity conveys a view of adult life that is at odds with the human condition, a view that cannot sustain the kinds of long-term commitments and involvements with other people that are necessary for raising and educating a child or for citizenship in a democratic society.”
—Carol Gilligan (20th century)
“We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)