Clough was born in the Yorkshire town of Baildon, near Bradford, and learned to climb on the gritstone edges near his home. He did his National Service in the RAF, hoping to join the RAF Mountain Rescue Service. He supported himself after leaving National Service in various jobs, including running a small climbing-school from the cottage he and his wife Nikki Clough owned at Glen Coe. Now one of the best British climbers of his generation, he made many difficult ascents in the Alps, including the first ascent of the Central Pillar of Frêney on Mont Blanc with Don Whillans, Chris Bonington and Jan Długosz in 1961 and the first British ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, with Bonington in 1962. He climbed widely in Britain too, publishing a guide to the Scottish Highlands in 1969, and in 1968 he and the Scottish mountaineer Tom Patey were the first to climb Am Buachaille, a sea stack at Sandwood Bay off the coast of Sutherland. Two years later, both Clough and Patey died in separate climbing accidents within five days of one another. When Clough died on 30 May 1970 he would have been unaware Patey had been killed abseiling down another Scottish sea stack on 25 May. His wife Nikki Clough, who later died of cancer, was also a mountaineer and climbed the north face of the Matterhorn with her husband.