About Bill Birkett..

On some of my book covers it says that I am one of Britain’s foremost mountain writers and photographers - an acknowledged expert on my native Lakeland. I guess I can live with that – thanks dear publicist. I was born and bred in Langdale and first started exploring the fells with my father and mother. Dad, Jim Birkett, a local quarryman, wasn’t just a regular, run of the mill, kind of person. More of a living climbing legend and acknowledged expert on the flora and fauna of the mountains. Our best times together where always amongst the hills.

There are three main strands to my passion for the hills; the natural wonder of the landscape, climbing steep places and the friendship and companionship of the people I share the hills with. The importance and degree of each changes and evolves. Sometimes nature is all absorbing, sometimes climbing is everything and many times just the joy of being with fun people out on the hills is what it’s all about. Usually of course it is a blend of all these elements that make for a great mountain day.

Today I talk widely, write and run a photographic agency specialising in all matters related to the Lake District, mountains and wild places. I have some thirty books, a mixture of my writing and photography, to my credit and my Lakeland Books include best selling guidebooks to the fells and valleys notably the definitive ‘Complete Lakeland Fells’ and ‘Exploring The Lakes and Low Fells’. Recently my photographic essays, published by Frances Lincoln, including ‘A Year In The Life of The Langdale Valleys’ (winner of the Outdoor Writers Guild Book of the Year) and ‘A Year In The Life of Borrowdale’ and ‘A Year In The Life of Glencoe’, have been greeted with much acclaim. I have also has presented a number of videos on walks amongst the fells and dales (and to any TV producers out there reading this – I would love to do more!).

The Birketts: taken from 'Bagged - the latest Birkett' an article by Terry Fletcher published in Cumbria magazine

It's an honour given to few men or women to have whole classes of hills named after them. It's well over a century since Sir Hector Munro created his eponymous Munro table of 284 Scottish summits over 3,000ft and perhaps the best known recent recipient is Alfred Wainwright whose efforts led to generations of peak-baggers crisscrossing the Lakes to collect the 214 'Wainwrights' listed in his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. But just a few miles down the road from AW's Kendal base another writer has now assumed the mantle. And he has more summits than the other twp put together - 541 - to his name.
The 'Birkett's' are all the Lake District hills topping the 1,000ft contour and included in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells, which has so far sold more than 100,000 copies. They amount to a formidable 'tick list' but already there are those who claim to have completed all of them. Those still on the long slog round the Birketts are quite likely to meet the author on his own wanderings around his home in Little Langdale. Despite having lived there all his life and walked and climbed the hills throughout his fifty-three years he says he never tires of walking and photographing them. Looking from his front door towards Tilberthwaite he says: 'I still wake up every morning and feel lucky to live here'.