Nick Barlow reviewed Wainwright by Hunter Davies
Review of 'Wainwright' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I love Wainwright's guides to the Lake District. As a walker, they're my bible, practical works of art that show you so much about a mountain and the land it sits in.
Unfortunately, this book reveals just how much you have to separate the art and the artist as it reveals what an unpleasant man Wainwright was. However, you need to pull a lot of that out of there as this biography regularly goes out of the way to downplay or just ignore what it reveals. Feels very dated in its style with regular info dumps that feel like padding and large sections that are just Wainwright's self-aggrandising letters presented without any critical engagement.