By Steve Matthews

Last updated 05:14, Friday, 31 October 2008

He was known as the greatest nose in the English-speaking world. This superlative was a compliment to a man who became the leading English expert in perfumery and wrote the standard work on cosmetics. He was Walter Poucher.

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On camera: Poucher’s view of the Scafell range. ‘He belonged to that small group of men who have deepened our appreciation of the Lake District’

A Camera in the Hills: The Life and Work of WA Poucher by Roly Smith. Frances Lincoln (£20)

It was said he held a thousand different scents in his memory. Certainly he could distinguish fragrances with all the precision of a wine connoisseur.

It led to a career as the chief chemist at Yardley cosmetics and eventually to an enviable encounter with Elizabeth Taylor.

It was in St Moritz and Elizabeth was fascinated by Walter. “Can we meet somewhere later and talk?” she said, “I’ve never seen anyone look quite so marvellous in my life.”

Quite something for the, reputedly, most beautiful woman in the world to say to anyone, let alone an 88-year-old man.

And Walter’s secret? Meticulously-applied cream blusher, subtle lipstick and five layers of jet mascara.

Walter insisted on testing his cosmetic products himself. As he said in response to an intrusive journalist: “If you mean do people think I’m a pansy, never. Elizabeth Taylor wished more men took as much trouble with their appearance. Mind you, I do it exceptionally well.”

Walter wore his make-up among the climbers at the Wastwater Hotel. And the tired, dirty, sweaty climbers honoured and respected him. The precision, sensitivity and artistry he employed in making perfumes, Walter also applied to the art of mountain photography.

Poucher’s photographs had introduced many to the character and the beauty of the mountains. Chris Bonington says he first became aware of the mountains when he was 15 and saw a book of his pictures: “I was inspired”.

Alfred Wainwright wrote to Poucher’s son, John, on his father’s death: “He has been a hero of mine since his Lakeland Through the Lens (1940) was published. He was a perfectionist with the camera and I greatly admired all his work in the last 50 years.”

Poucher’s fascination with the hills, and especially the Cumbrian Fells, began in 1912, when, as a young pharmacist from the flatter lands of Lincolnshire, he took his first mountain-walking holiday.

It was almost 30 years later that he published his first book of photographs and others followed on a regular basis, three on the Lake District and others on the Pennines, Scotland and Wales and on Surrey where he lived most of his adult life.

In a quirky calculation at the end of the book Roly Smith reckons that Poucher sold 772,980 books containing an incredible total of 86,073,120 black and white photographs and a further 35,613,320 in colour.

The photographs created the Lakeland landscape for many people. They were the product of patient perfectionism, the willingness to wait for the right moment when sun and cloud and hills were in harmony.

He acknowledged the Abraham Brothers of Keswick, with their heavy cameras and plates as his true predecessors. Poucher’s task was easier with his miniature Leica cameras. Writing of his first book, published in the dark days of war, Monica Dickens said: “Turn those pages and you will find the beauty that no war can scar and the peace which is eternal.”

Walter Poucher died on August 5, 1988, at the grand age of 97, and was cremated at Carlisle Crematorium. He spent the last years of his life in a nursing home at Thornthwaite on the shores of Bassenthwaite.

He belonged to that small group of men who have deepened our appreciation of the Lake District.

Roly Smith’s biography outlines Poucher’s careers as a cosmetologist and photographer. The outer man was elegant, always meticulously presented, but the inner man remained secretive, apart.

He was a perfectionist and an observer. His wonderful photographs enable us to share something of the inner world of this peculiarly sensitive man.

n A Camera in the Hills is available from Bookends, www.bookscumbria.com and other retailers.