William Hutchison Murray,OBE (18 March 1913 – 19 March 1996)[1] was aScottishmountaineer and writer, one of a group of activemountain climbers, mainly fromClydeside, before and just afterWorld War II.
Murray was born inLiverpool, the son of William Hutchison Murray (1878–1915), of Cairndhu, Queens Drive,Mossley Hill, H.M. Inspector of Mines for Liverpool and North Wales, who was killed atGallipoli whilst serving as asapper with theRoyal Marines, and his wife Helen (née Robertson). He was subsequently raised at Huntly Terrace,North Kelvinside,Glasgow. His paternal grandparents, William Hutchison Murray (b. 1850; a wool manufacturer who, on losing all the money he had invested in the 1878 collapse of theCity of Glasgow Bank, became a respected music teacher atAnderson College, Glasgow, later becoming Music Inspector for the Glasgow Board of Education, and conductor of the Glasgow Choral Society) and Margaret Hesketh (née Jenkins), lived atGiffnock,East Renfrewshire.[2][3][4][5][6]
Murray did much of his most influential climbing in the period just before World War II. He climbed on many occasions with the slightly olderJ. H. B. Bell.
At the outbreak ofWorld War II, he joined theArgyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was posted to the Middle East and North Africa. He was captured south ofMersa Matruh during theWestern Desert Campaign in a retreat toEl Alamein in June 1942 by a tank commander from the15th Panzer Division who was armed with a machine-pistol. A passage inMountain magazine (#67, 1979) describes the moments after his capture:[7]
He then spent three years inprisoner of war camps in Italy (Chieti), Germany (Moosberg,Brunswick) and Czechoslovakia (Marisch TrubeauOflag VIII-F). While imprisoned, Murray wrote a book entitledMountaineering in Scotland.[8] The first draft of the work was written on the only paper available to him – roughtoilet paper. The manuscript was found and destroyed by the Gestapo.[7] To the incredulity of his fellow prisoners, Murray's response to the loss was to start again, despite the risk of its loss and his physical condition being so poor from the near starvation diet that he believed he would never climb again. The rewritten work was finally published in 1947 and was followed by the sequel,Undiscovered Scotland, in 1951. Both concentrate on Scottish winter climbing and were widely credited with helping to inspire the post-war renaissance in the sport.
Murray was deputy leader toEric Shipton on the1951 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, but failed to acclimatise at altitude and so was not included in the 1953 team. He also explored part of theApi group inNepal with John Tyson in 1953. He was an active campaigner to protect wilderness areas of Scotland from ill-considered development. In 1961, a major success was the defeat of plans to build ahydroelectric scheme inGlen Nevis.
He won many awards, including the Literary Award of the U.S.A. Education Board, an honorary doctorate fromStirling University and the Mungo Park Medal for Himalayan exploration.[9] He settled with his wife, Anne B. Murray (née Clark), inArgyll.[10] He was appointedO.B.E. in the1966 New Years Honours forservices to Mountaineering in Scotland.[11]
His autobiography,The Evidence of Things Not Seen, won the Grand Prize of theBanff Mountain Book Festival (2002).[12] The book was completed on his death by his wife Anne, who also contributed some of her poetry and its title links to the title of the penultimate chapter of his earlier bookMountaineering in Scotland[8] where Murray quoted a passage from theKJV translation of the New Testament which states that "faith is the evidence of things not seen" (Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1).
A quotation by Murray is widely misattributed toJohann Wolfgang von Goethe.[13] The following passage occurs near the beginning of Murray'sThe Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951):
The "Goethe couplet" referred to here is from an extremely loose translation ofGoethe'sFaust lines 214-30 made byJohn Anster in 1835.[14]
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