Born at Crossens, near Southport, Lancashire, he is often regarded as the father of the modern sport of rock-climbing.
In daring feats of endurance on water, he swam down the Linn of Dee, crossed from the Isle of Man to the Cumberland Coast at night in a canoe, and rowed across the Minch to the Outer Hebrides in an open rowing boat.
Educated at Fettes College, and at Liverpool University where he studied medicine. He played hockey for the university and was a keen cricketer. He was a founder member in 1930 of the Liverpool University Rock-Climbing Club, the first of its kind in Britain.
In 1933 he graduated and a year later obtained a diploma in psychological medicine. He set up a psychiatric practice and was appointed psychiatrist to the Liverpool Child Guidance Clinic.
In 1935, Menlove fell in love with Wilfred Noyce, a seventeen year old Charterhouse schoolboy. They spent much time together, and in 1936 they worked together on a guidebook for the Climbers' Club.
Noyce went to King's College Cambridge and started a relationship with Arthur Cecil Pigou, a Fellow of the college. When the War started Noyce and Pigou joined the Friends' Ambulance Corps.
During the War Menlove registered as a conscientious objector. In 1942 he moved to 8 Meadow Road, London, SW8, and worked at the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and at the Tavistock Clinic. In 1944 bouts of depression and paranoia caused him to move out of London to Kent.
Finally he was living alone in a house on the North Downs and in 1958 he ended his life by swallowing potassium cyanide. Noyce married in 1950 and had two sons. He was a member of the 1953 Everest expedition, becoming the first man to reach the South Col.
Source: The Knitting Circle, UK - http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/people.html
