Cometh the hour, cometh the many men (and women). The 2012 centenary of Captain Scott’s death inspired a series of heroic forays into print: glory-hungry (or just plain hungry) authors questing for something new to say about this much-described event.
Next year is the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest, and so we might expect more of the same, with an icy blasted peak instead of an icy blasted pole. For those who approach these commemorative sorties with a heavy heart, Mick Conefrey’s Everest 1953 should come as a vertiginous relief. The book is neither a flimsy reprise, nor a mercenary hatchet job. Instead, Conefrey crafts an exciting, moving account, with a few controversies revisited in an interesting way. He also refuses to fall into the trap of intuiting the meaning of all things from a single expedition, as sometimes happens when the festive chronicler runs short of new material, or tires of the subject halfway through.
Conefrey begins in the mid-19th century, with the Great Trigonometric Survey of British India, which used observation points to measure the tallest mountain of the Himalayas at 29,002 feet, just 27 feet short of the actual height.
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