Eddie Forbes Climo 1947 – 2016

News from Kernow Matters To Us:

It is with great sorrow that we record that Eddie Forbes Climo passed away last Saturday. Eddie, christened Hedley after his father, was the first son of Hedley Climo of Bodmin and Isobel (Sybil) of Thurso in Scotland. Eddie taught himself Welsh while studying in Wales and later on Scottish Gaelic. Later in life he went on to teach himself Cornish. It was obvious from some of his publications that he knew something of other languages.

He had two sons, Seoras and Charlie, who for a while were raised bilingually with Gaelic.

Eddie was always a keen supporter of Morton Nance's Unified Cornish spelling. He thought it a perfectly acceptable system on which to base the revival, although he realised that it was capable of modification to bring it in line with recent studies. He regarded the abandonment of Unified by others as nothing short of lunacy.

In 2010 Eddie started a print-on-demand publishing company, Gwask an Orlewen”. He commenced the publication of a number of high quality titles which were either out of print texts from the earlier revival or translations into Cornish of out of copyright material. Before his untimely death this amounted to more than 35 titles.

Surprisingly none of these works were awarded the Holyer an Gof prize although no doubt the late Leonard Truran would have been proud of the work that Eddie was doing. In 2015 his book 'Drollys Gys-Dons' (Cornish Christmas Plays) was the first winner of the Pewas Perghyryn award.

Eddie and his brother as children followed their father, who was a major in the army, around the world and no doubt this had something to do with his ability with languages, he worked and lived in Plymouth for a while until his boys had flown the nest when he returned to the family home in Taunton.

Although Eddie lived in Taunton he spoke Cornish well and was quite happy to use it over iChat or Skype,

Our condolences to Eddie's brother Laurie and to his sons.

Just some of Eddie's books:http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/GwaskanOrlewen

Photo shows L to R: Ray Chubb, Craig Weatherhill, Eddie Climo and Clive Baker at an Agan Tavas presentation.