In reply to Chris_Mellor:
I didn't really know Ken but met him on numerous occasions. It was, however, the first of those meetings that sticks in my mind and which sort of set the tone. It was aboard the Lundy Gannet in nineteen seventy something. We were a group of five or six climbers of very modest abilities. Another largish group contained the likes of Littlejohn and Keith Darbyshire, maybe Bob Moulton(?)... and Ken, who lurched across to us. His opening salvo went something like:
'Right. What grade do you climb?' (Luckily this wasn't directed at me but at Joe.)
'Oh, about VDiff or Severe...' (Joe had been taken aback at Ken's direct approach was being rather over modest, but not by that much.)
'WHAT? Lundy is about THE BIGGEST BOOM that BRITISH CLIMBING has ever SEEN... and YOU come here climbing SEVERE??!'
Brilliant!
On the way back aboard the violently bobbing Gannet, Ken was waxing lyrical to us about one of his team's (the A-team, of course) new routes, using every superlative under the sun, when the author of said route came over and said:
'But Ken, you haven't done it!'
Ken wasn't fazed in the slightest and shot back:
'Yes. But I KNOW!'
Fast forward thirty years or so when he was in the throes of reprinting Rébuffat's 100 best in the Mont Blanc massif, I remember him trying to persuade Madame Rébuffat to allow him to replace the Bonatti Pillar with something else - something that was still standing - maybe one of the Brouillard routes. Mme Rébuffat stood her ground and firmly refused to have her husband's masterpiece sullied, even though that part of the Dru was long since departed. I'd love to have heard that conversation!
RIP Ken.