"One day I got a call from Sandy Hewitson, just along the street. He had been approached by a Mr Wainwright to print a guidebook and wanted me to take a look at it, as it looked too big a job for them. I went around and was amazed. I couldnt believe one man had hand-drawn every page. He wanted it reproduced exactly as hed done it and set it out. I dont think anyone since the days of the days of the monks had ever produced a handwritten book."
Alfred Wainwright MBE, who preferred to be known as A. Wainwright or A.W., was an English fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the English Lake District. Among his 40-odd other book
"I went whenever I could, and always my eyes lifted to the hills. I was to find a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains and a tranquil mind upon reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindness of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world."
"I was working for my own pleasure...gathering together all my notes and drawings and a host of recollections and putting them in a book so that when I was an old man, I could look at them in leisure, recall my adventures, and go on a fell walking trip in spirit long after my legs had given up."
"Some people escape in dreams but I was fortunate enough to live in a perfect dreamland that actually existed. I was always happier pulling on my boots in the morning then putting on my shoes."
"I still consider his Seven Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells be works of art. Ill go further. I think they are masterpieces."