H. W. Tilman (Harold William Tilman) Biography

British writer on mountaineering and sailing, born in Wallasey, Cheshire; he attended the Royal Military Academy, after which he was on active service in Flanders from 1916 to 1918. Following a period as a coffee-planter in Kenya, where he began his celebrated climbing partnership with Eric Shipton, he devoted himself chiefly to mountaineering, becoming one of the leading climbers of his day. His absorbing accounts of expeditions in Africa, the Himalayas, the Karakoram, and the Chinese Pamirs are collected in The Seven Mountain-Travel Books (1983). From the early 1950s until his disappearance after sailing out of Rio in 1977, Tilman voyaged in a succession of small boats, most notably his cutter Mischief, to remote mountainous areas in the Arctic and Antarctic. The books which resulted are collected as The Eight Sailing/Mountain-Exploration Books (1987). High Mountains and Cold Seas (1980) is J. R. L. Anderson's biography of Tilman.