Bill Birkett

Bill Birkett, born Thomas William Birkett in 1952, is an English civil engineer, climbing writer, photographer, rock climber and mountaineer from the Lake District in Cumbria. The son of the pioneering Lake District climber Jim Birkett, he grew up in Langdale, began climbing as a child and led his first extreme-graded climbs at sixteen. He trained as a civil engineer at Teesside Polytechnic and worked for Cumbria County Highways before becoming a freelance writer and photographer in 1985. His first ascents include Centrefold on Raven Crag, Langdale, in 1984, one of the first E7-graded climbs in Britain. He has written or co-authored more than thirty books, and the 541 hills listed in his Complete Lakeland Fells of 1994 are known as the Birketts in his honour.