author, mountaineering writer – books, blog, opinion
It’s not clear why Kangchenjunga should be considered the last great mountain, but whatever: this book is a comprehensive history of all expeditions up to its first ascent in 1955. I learned a lot from it, and I can thoroughly recommend it, however well acquainted you are with Kangchenjunga’s history.
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Publishing is one of the industries that could adapt to a new world that might emerge in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. But traditional publishers and indie authors share a common threat that promises an uncertain future.
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A quick book update. I’m in the process of publishing revised editions of the Footsteps on the Mountain Travel Diaries. The revised digital edition of The Baruntse Adventure is available now at a bargain price from the main online bookstores.
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Last week I teamed up with fellow mountain writer and Amazon bestseller John D Burns to bring you a gripping excerpt from my first book. This week, not only has John recorded an excerpt from my second book, but we’ve also done a short interview about it.
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Well folks, I have something rather special this week to help stimulate the senses while you are in coronavirus lockdown. Fellow mountain writer John D Burns has featured an audio excerpt from Seven Steps from Snowdon to Everest on his weekly podcast, and it’s great – a dramatic reading of the crux section where I tackle the infamous Second Step.
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As coronavirus lockdown takes hold, the nature writer Robert Macfarlane has started running a reading group on Twitter about Nan Shepherd’s classic nature book The Living Mountain. It was a no-brainer for me to join, and it’s helping me to see the world differently.
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There aren’t many characters in Joe Simpson’s book Touching the Void, and the main one spends most of the story entirely alone, contemplating existence as he crawls for three days along a glacier. How on earth were they going to make a stage version of this?
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The shortlist for this year’s Boardman Tasker Prize was announced this month, and once again five out of six books on the shortlist are about climbing. You can be certain that the winner will be one of the five. [*]
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A chance meeting at Refugio Carrel on Chimborazo on the evening before our second ascent reminded me of another favourite climb in Ecuador a few years earlier. It was a climb that produced a unique video that lives long in the memory.
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Those of you who have been kind enough to pre-order Feet and Wheels to Chimborazo will hopefully have seen it appear on your devices sometime last week. The entire project, from push off to launch has taken about two years.
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