Mo Anthoine

Julian Vincent "Mo" Anthoine (1 August 1939 – 12 August 1989) was a British mountaineer who climbed extensively in the Himalayas in the 1970s and 80s.

Early life Born in Kidderminster, he left King Charles I School at the age of sixteen to become a trainee manager in the carpet industry. It was on an Outward Bound course as part of his management training that he had his first climbing experience, and soon afterward he left the carpet industry to take a job at the Ogwen Cottage Outdoor Pursuits Centre in Snowdonia. He travelled widely in his early 20s, hitchhiking across Europe, Asia, and Australia from 1961 to 1963, paying his way by working in an asbestos mine in Australia and smuggling turquoise into Pakistan. On his return to Britain, he had a spell training and working as a teacher in England, before settling in North Wales in 1968 and starting a business, "Snowdon Mouldings", manufacturing climbing helmets.

Climbing career

Anthoine might have remained a relatively unknown figure outside climbing circles but for his friendship with the writer and occasional climber Al Alvarez. Alvarez wrote a fictionalized account of the incident for The New Yorker in 1971, followed by a full-length biography of Anthoine in 1988. The book's title, Feeding the Rat, derived from Anthoine's characterisation of his need for adventure as a rat that gnawed away at him.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Anthoine took part in a number of Himalayan expeditions. In 1976, he made the first ascent of Trango Tower with Joe Brown. The incident attracted considerable media attention, but Anthoine, a modest man, was content to remain in the background and take little credit. He died the following year of a brain tumour at his home in Nant Peris.