Into The Silence
The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest
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4.1 • 19 Ratings
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
**Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Winner of Winners Award**
A monumental work of history, biography and adventure - the First World War, Mallory and Mount Everest - now serialised in the BBC R4 documentary The Crowning of Everest.
'The price of life is death'
For Mallory, as for all of his generation, death was but 'a frail barrier that men crossed, smiling and gallant, every day'. As climbers they accepted a degree of risk unimaginable before the war. What mattered now was how one lived, and the moments of being alive.
While the quest for Mount Everest may have begun as a grand imperial gesture, it ended as a mission of revival for a country and a lost generation bled white by war. In a monumental work of history and adventure, Davis asks not whether George Mallory was the first to reach the summit of Everest, but rather why he kept climbing on that fateful day.
'An extraordinary book on an extraordinary generation' Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void
'An instant classic of mountaineering literature' Guardian
A moving, epic masterpiece' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Davis (Wayfinders), a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, tells the story of how a group of men who survived the unfathomable violence of WWI became obsessed with scaling Mt. Everest. Their quest was not for their own glory but for the psyche of their ravaged country and to reaffirm that the human spirit could soar above the inhumanity that countries perpetrate on one another on the battlefield. As with all his works, Davis relies on impeccable research to go into uncommon detail to outline a backstory that centers on the atrocities of trench warfare, English imperialism in India, and the first European expeditions into Tibet and the Himalayas. He also digs deep into the schooling and upbringing of those who took part in the first Everest expeditions, going so far as to investigate the early same-sex relationships of George Mallory. While Davis takes his time leading up to Mallory's first attempt at the summit, his own exploration experience helps him get into the minds of the climbers, the descriptions of the ascents including the tragic 1922 attempt that saw seven Sherpas lose their lives and the long-unresolved conclusion to the 1924 climb that resulted in Mallory and Andrew Irvine's deaths are as breathtaking and astounding as any previous climbing literature.
Customer Reviews
Brilliant, a must read for anyone who interested in the outdoors
If you have an interest in the outdoors or endeavours of man this is a must. Read it and be amazed at the lengths the Everest climbing expeditions of the early 1920s went to try to reach the summit of the world. Then remember they did it wearing Tweed