Climbing up the Eiffel Tower

Sad to hear that Guardian journalist, Peter Lennon, has died at the age of 81. Peter was a junior Paris correspondent for the paper in the 1960s, before leaving to freelance. He re-joined as a feature writer and interviewer in 1989 and stayed until 2005, although continuing to contribute pieces until quite recently. In 1967 he and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard released The Rocky Road to Dublin, a portrait of Ireland in the 1960s - a film that caused great uproar in Peter's country of birth. Read more about his life in the Guardian obituary and also New Yorker blogpost.

Peter was a brilliant writer so it was a pleasure to be able to use one of his pieces in the Guardian Book of Mountains. It's about a mountaineering triumph but not quite the usual sort of report as the following from May 1964 shows:

The article appeared in an early edition of the paper on May 4 1964 and was re-printed on May 26. Read more here.