Fearless on Everest - Hardcover

Summers, Julie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297646826 ISBN 13: 9780297646822

Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000

Synopsis

* Includes never-before-published letters and photographs

* Written by an Irvine family member
Mallory and Irvine. These two names have been inextricably joined since the two climbers disappeared on Mount Everest more than 75 years ago. Could they have been the first to reach the summit of the world's highest mountains-some 30 years earlier than Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay?
Mallory's story has been well chronicled, but Irvine has always been overshadowed by his more famous climbing partner and little has been written about him. Who was he? Why was he invited by the British Everest Committee to join the 1924 expedition despite his limited mountaineering experience? And why did Mallory, 16 years his senior, select Irvine as his partner for the final assault on the summit?
Julie Summers, great niece of Sandy Irvine, has been fascinated since childhood by the story of Uncle Sandy. In May 2000, Julie made an astonishing discovery: a long forgotten and unopened trunk containing Irvine's letters and photographs from Everest. Drawing on these and other material, Julie writes a revealing story of a fearless young adventurer whose life and death linked him with one of the greatest mountaineering legends of all time.

About this title

About the Author

JULIE SUMMERS was born in Liverpool in 1960 and grew up in Cheshire. Educated at Bristol and London Universities, she gained an MA in Studies in Medieval Architecture at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1985. Julie's interest in writing began at school and she greatly enjoyed the research for her postgraduate thesis. Her love of the outdoor life led her to pursue climbing, skiing and hill walking. In 1997 Julie and her family spent a year in the USA and there she began to research and write her first full length biography Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine.

Sandy Irvine was her great uncle and George Mallory's climbing partner on the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition. Her second book, a pictorial anthology of the life of Sir Ernest Shackleton entitled The Shackleton Voyages followed in 2002. She has been working on a biography of her grandfather, Sir Philip Toosey, the real-life colonel who built the bridge on the River Kwai since the beginning of 2001. The Colonel of Tamarkan: Philip Toosey and the Bridge over the River Kwai and is due to be published in September 2005.

Review

The success of [Summers'] book is to make you believe it only happened yesterday. (High Mountain Sports)

A compelling book. Summers has written a loving tribute to Irvine whom fellow climber Lt. Col. Edward Norton eulogized for his exceptional abilities with things mechanical, his cheerful camaraderie, his unselfishness, and high courage. (The Explorers Journal)

An intensely personal, candid, and informative account written with a narrative smoothness that completely engages the readers attention. (Mid-west Book Review)

Edition details

• Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0297646826
• ISBN 13: 9780297646822
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288