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BOOKS
Lofty
Heights
Replaying
the great games in the snow
By
Vijay Jung Thapa
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The
Epic Of Mount Everest
By
Sir Francis Younghusband
Pan Books
Price: £7.99
Pages: 254 |
Of
all the myriad reasons why you should pick up The Epic of Mount Everest:
The Historic Account of Mallory's Expeditions, two stand out in the
mind's eye. No one was more "in the know" about those three
incredibly daring Everest expeditions of 1921, 1922 and 1924 than the
author, Sir Francis Younghusband, a legendary spy and explorer whose Great
Game exploits managed to thrill a whole generation of Englishmen.
Younghusband
was in fact, since his appointment as president of the Royal Geographic
Society (RGS) in 1919, the architect behind those expeditions and some
(though not all) may say one of the first to even conceive of the notion
of standing on the top of the world. Younghusband always held that climbing
mountains was "an instinctive human urge", not far from George
Leigh Mallory's "because it is there" justification. The second
reason is that this immensely readable book has been "re-launched"
with an incisive introduction by Patrick French, whose brilliant 1995
biography on Younghusband was lauded in literary circles and even earned
him the Somerset Maugham Award.
Of course,
the more obvious reason why this book will be picked up is the renewed
interest in those early Everest expeditions ever since the 1999 Anglo-American
expedition found George Mallory's pristinely preserved body face down
in the snow at 27,000 ft. When Mallory and Andrew Irvine walked out of
their lives and into legend that frosty June morning in 1924 on the slopes
of Everest, it captured everybody's imagination and left behind a tantalising
mystery of whether they had actually climbed it. It's interesting then
to read what one legend has to say about another. Writes Younghusband:
"Mallory knew the dangers ... He could imagine the thrill his success
would cause among all fellow mountaineers; the credit it would bring England
... Of the two alternatives, to turn back a third time or to die, the
latter was for Mallory probably the easier."
Climbing
Everest wasn't a crass, commercial activity, but a spiritually uplifting
experience that pitted man against nature. Younghusband's contemporaries
in the RGS felt Everest wouldn't be conquered. But the Colonial Colonel
saw it differently: "The mountain stands there proud and erect and
unconquered but in the end man will have his way."
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