Another View

Check out this stencil image inspired by a Night Climbers shot -


it's from Joe Iurato and you can see more of his great work over at his website. I think you'll love it!

On the Tube

I've put a vid of Whipplesnaith pics up on YouTube - Mainly because I had a couple of hours to spare and thought it would be fun. Obviously I stole the soundtrack so I'll have to take it down or change it to something free... Anyway, enjoy:

Follow and Scale the Soaring Heights...

...of Twitter!




Thought it might be fun to give ol' Whipplesnaith a voice to the present so you can now get daily updates from 1937. Just click here or on the image above and soon get you'll a slice of stegophilic wisdom to cheer you up every day.

New Review from The Guardian

"...as all the above quotes amply demonstrate, the book is also worth reading simply because of the excellence of its prose. It enables even those who – like me – prefer to use the stairs to get to the top of buildings to experience some of the vertiginous pleasure of night climbing; the serene beauty of a moonlit ascent of Kings College chapel, the joy of mastering a well-secured drainpipe, and the wonder of watching the dawn rise over the roofs of Cambridge. It is, in short, a book as wonderful as it is weird" Read the whole piece here.

4500 Celebration

Just to let you know that to celebrate the sale of the 4500th copy of our favourite book - without a chain bookstore I may add - Oleander has a May discount of 20% going on so pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and head on over for a cheap copy of NCoC. Still, I reckon if a chain did take it on we'd be looking at 45,000 soon enough.

Check These Out!

How good are these?!? I think they're fantastic! They're spray-paint renditions of a couple of the more famous of the NCoC images and have been created by Joe Iurato of Urban Climber magazine. Here's what he said about how he produces them:

“...aside from what I do at the mag, I'm also an artist (more of the street art variety) and have been recently asked to do a few nice shows. Well, I was just invited to do a major group exhibition in Berlin, and I wanted to use some of the photos from Night Climbers of Cambridge to base my spray painted canvasses on. Typically I take an image and recreate it by cutting and stenciling, with spray paint, several layers - until the image begins to form, and appears close to realistic. I am so inspired by that book and its images that I'd love to use some for this show.”


So judging by these tiny .jpegs I should imagine the show will be a huge success. Best of luck to you Joe! And, of course, thanks for spreading the Whipplesnaith word!

Pinnacle Poetry!

Hey - how about this? I just came across a poem about our guys by Merryn Williams in 2006 - weird I hadn't come across it before. Here's a couple of stanzas, find the whole thing here

The Night Climbers of Cambridge

When all are gone, except the cats,
and the occasional, homecoming drunk,
and the world goes chrome-yellow in the tinted light –
better in the old days when the town was dead black –
they creep from vault to chimney stack,
with their climbing-tackle.

The college clocks chime quarter-hours
in tune as they ascend with care,
foot over foot on the frosty gleaming slates,
spires spread out like wedding cake,
crusted icing, hard to break.
Up here, it’s so graceful.

The Alps are heroic but this is perverse;
if caught, ...continued here