Farrar, John Percy (1857-1929), soldier and mountaineer

Percy Farrar was born in 1857 in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. He was President of the Alpine Club between 1917-1919 and was an original member of the Mount Everest Committee (a joint body composed of Alpine Club and Royal Geographical Society members that was set up to co-ordinate the reconnaissance of the approaches to and possible routes up Mount Everest in 1921). He had been party to the discussions that led to this body's formation and proposing the mountain as an achievable mountaineering objective Farrar's role was, amongst other things, to raise funds for the expedition. He was the one who successfully proposed that George Mallory, to whom he had been introduced at one of Geoffrey Winthrop Young's parties at Pen-y-Pass in 1909, should go on the initial 1921 expedition.