Vyvyan John Michael Kenneth

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Biografie:
John Michael Kenneth Vyvyan (1907-1991)
Michael Vyvyan came from the Cornish family who lived at Trelawarren on the southern shore of the Helford estuary. The house is a mixture of 17th century restraint and Strawberry Hill flamboyance, nestling in twisting creeks and ancient oak woods. 'How did my ancestors get all this? Well, they were pirates and politicians mainly and then became respectable.'
While he was at school at Uppingham, Michael started climbing with A E Foot, that stalwart teacher-cum-alpinist who started many. young mountaineers on their path. Michael also did some good routes with guides and became a fine all-round mountaineer. He was never in a hurry, unfussed, witty and with a steady ambition to climb big mountains.
In 1931 he joined the Diplomatic Service and was in Moscow during much of the 1930s. In 1937 he was a great encouragement to us on our Caucasus trip and would have joined us if it had been possible. Moscow was a depressing place in that decade for those who kept their eyes and ears open. Three things dislodged Michael from the diplomatic ladder: his appreciation of the realities behind the communist facade and consequent disagreement with our British tendency, by the 30s, to tolerate and be soft with Stalin; his yearning to get to the high untrodden mountains of Central Asia; and the War.
In 1938 Michael resigned from the Foreign Service and was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College Cambridge to teach modern history. During that summer he and Paul Secord made the first serious reconnaissance of Rakaposhi. That year there were only four climbing expeditions in the Karakoram - one American and three British. Michael's account in AJ 51 (1939) of their exploration of the Rakaposhi-Disteghil Sar group is a period piece and suggests something of his tenacity and powerful topographic grasp. They climbed the NW peak, 22.000 ft - 'an easy and unexacting route ... had opened itself to us'! Perhaps, but they covered a great deal of ground during a period of exceptionally fine weather.
On the outbreak of war Michael joined the army as a rifleman and was then commissioned in the Black Watch. Subsequently he served in the SAS and Commandos. After a three-year secondment back to the Foreign Office in 1944, he returned to Trinity where he remained almost until his death.
Michael was a somewhat 19th century character, combining wide scholarship, a capacity for friendship with all ages, and romantic enthusiasms. I remember a camp fire in the valley below the Bernina peaks, by the Silser See. There were ten of us, from I s-year-olds upwards. The fire was burning low and Michael stoked the conversation: Central Asia, Nietzsche (who had died on the other side of our lake), food (Michael was a good cook), communism, climbs in the Lake District, commandos, electing college Heads and the Austro-Hungarian empire. Some of those teenagers still remember that evening.
Robin Hodgkin
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 98, 1993, Seite 319-320


Geboren am:
1907
Gestorben am:
1991