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Author: Simon Thompson Publisher: Cicerone Press Limited ISBN: 1849656991 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
To the impartial observer Britain does not appear to have any mountains. Yet the British invented the sport of mountain climbing and for two periods in history British climbers led the world in the pursuit of this beautiful and dangerous obsession. Unjustifiable Risk is the story of the social, economic and cultural conditions that gave rise to the sport, and the achievements and motives of the scientists and poets, parsons and anarchists, villains and judges, ascetics and drunks that have shaped its development over the past two hundred years. The history of climbing inevitably reflects the wider changes that have occurred in British society, including class, gender, nationalism and war, but the sport has also contributed to changing social attitudes to nature and beauty, heroism and death. Over the years, increasing wealth, leisure and mobility have gradually transformed climbing from an activity undertaken by an eccentric and privileged minority into a sub-division of the leisure and tourist industry, while competition, improved technology and information, and increasing specialisation have helped to create climbs of unimaginable difficulty at the leading edge of the sport. But while much has changed, even more has remained the same. Today's climbers would be instantly recognisable to their Victorian predecessors, with their desire to escape from the crowded complexity of urban society and willingness to take "unjustifiable" risk in pursuit of beauty, adventure and self-fulfilment. Unjustifiable Risk was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker prize in 2011.
Author: Simon Thompson Publisher: Cicerone Press Limited ISBN: 1849656991 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
To the impartial observer Britain does not appear to have any mountains. Yet the British invented the sport of mountain climbing and for two periods in history British climbers led the world in the pursuit of this beautiful and dangerous obsession. Unjustifiable Risk is the story of the social, economic and cultural conditions that gave rise to the sport, and the achievements and motives of the scientists and poets, parsons and anarchists, villains and judges, ascetics and drunks that have shaped its development over the past two hundred years. The history of climbing inevitably reflects the wider changes that have occurred in British society, including class, gender, nationalism and war, but the sport has also contributed to changing social attitudes to nature and beauty, heroism and death. Over the years, increasing wealth, leisure and mobility have gradually transformed climbing from an activity undertaken by an eccentric and privileged minority into a sub-division of the leisure and tourist industry, while competition, improved technology and information, and increasing specialisation have helped to create climbs of unimaginable difficulty at the leading edge of the sport. But while much has changed, even more has remained the same. Today's climbers would be instantly recognisable to their Victorian predecessors, with their desire to escape from the crowded complexity of urban society and willingness to take "unjustifiable" risk in pursuit of beauty, adventure and self-fulfilment. Unjustifiable Risk was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker prize in 2011.
Author: Colin Wells Publisher: ISBN: 9780903908627 Category : Mountaineering Languages : en Pages : 120
Book Description
Colin Wells provides a full, very readable record of the way the sport has developed from the first recorded climb to the present day. It additionally captures the extraordinary range of personalities that mountaineering has spawned.
Author: Simon Bainbridge Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192599763 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 420
Book Description
This book examines the relationship between Romantic-period writing and the activity that Samuel Taylor Coleridge christened 'mountaineering' in 1802. It argues that mountaineering developed as a pursuit in Britain during the Romantic era, earlier than is generally recognised, and shows how writers including William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Walter Scott were central to the activity's evolution. It explores how the desire for physical ascent shaped Romantic-period literary culture and investigates how the figure of the mountaineer became crucial to creative identities and literary outputs. Illustrated with 25 images from the period, the book shows how mountaineering in Britain had its origins in scientific research, antiquarian travel, and the search for the picturesque and the sublime. It considers how writers engaged with mountaineering's power dynamics and investigates issues including the politics of the summit view (what Wordsworth terms 'visual sovereignty'), the relationships between different types of 'mountaineers', and the role of women in the developing cultures of ascent. Placing the work of canonical writers alongside a wide range of other types of mountaineering literature, this book reassesses key Romantic-period terms and ideas, such as vision, insight, elevation, revelation, transcendence, and the sublime. It opens up new ways of understanding the relationship between Romantic-period writers and the world that they experienced through their feet and hands, as well as their eyes, as they moved through the challenging landscapes of the British mountains.
Author: Maurice Isserman Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300164203 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 592
Book Description
In the first comprehensive history of Himalayan mountaineering in 50 years, the authors offer detailed, original accounts of the most significant climbs since the 1890s, and they compellingly evoke the social and cultural worlds that gave rise to those expeditions.
Author: Chris Bonington Publisher: Bbc Publications ISBN: 9780563209188 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Mountaineering has always demanded a fine balancing act between the adrenalin thrust of calculated risk-taking & the basic instinct for survival. The mountaineers of the Victorial golden age which opened up the Alps were men like Whymper & Mummery who tested this balance constantly as they pushed themselves further & further, first in the Alps & later in the Himalaya.
Author: Scott Ellsworth Publisher: Little, Brown ISBN: 0316434876 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 413
Book Description
Winner of the 2020 National Outdoor Book Award for Best History/Biography A saga of survival, technological innovation, and breathtaking human physical achievement -- all set against the backdrop of a world headed toward war -- that became one of the most compelling international dramas of the 20th century. As tension steadily rose between European powers in the 1930s, a different kind of battle was already raging across the Himalayas. Teams of mountaineers from Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the United States were all competing to be the first to climb the world's highest peaks, including Mount Everest and K2. Unlike climbers today, they had few photographs or maps, no properly working oxygen systems, and they wore leather boots and cotton parkas. Amazingly, and against all odds, they soon went farther and higher than anyone could have imagined. And as they did, their story caught the world's attention. The climbers were mobbed at train stations, and were featured in movies and plays. James Hilton created the mythical land of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon, while an English eccentric named Maurice Wilson set out for Tibet in order to climb Mount Everest alone. And in the darkened corridors of the Third Reich, officials soon discovered the propaganda value of planting a Nazi flag on top of the world's highest mountains Set in London, New York, Germany, and in India, China, and Tibet, The World Beneath Their Feet is a story not only of climbing and mountain climbers, but also of passion and ambition, courage and folly, tradition and innovation, tragedy and triumph. Scott Ellsworth tells a rollicking, real-life adventure story that moves seamlessly from the streets of Manhattan to the footlights of the West End, deadly avalanches on Nanga Parbat, rioting in the Kashmir, and the wild mountain dreams of a New Zealand beekeeper named Edmund Hillary and a young Sherpa runaway called Tenzing Norgay. Climbing the Himalayas was the Greatest Generation's moonshot-one that was clouded by the onset of war and then, incredibly, fully accomplished. A gritty, fascinating history that promises to enrapture fans of Hampton Sides, Erik Larson, Jon Krakauer, and Laura Hillenbrand, The World Beneath Their Feet brings this forgotten story back to life.
Author: Phil Kelly Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing ISBN: 9781906148720 Category : Rock climbing Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
'Peak Rock' is a celebration of significant developments at the cutting edge of rock climbing in the Peak District, from the day that James W. Puttrell first set foot on rock at Whamcliffe in the late 19th century through to modern day ascents on the area's gritstone and limestone crags.
Author: John Porter Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing ISBN: 1910240095 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
'The wall was the ambition, the style became the obsession.' In the autumn of 1982, a single stone fell from high on the south face of Annapurna and struck Alex MacIntyre on the head, killing him instantly and robbing the climbing world of one of its greatest talents. Although only twenty-eight years old, Alex was already one of the leading figures of British mountaineering's most successful era. His ascents included hard new routes on Himalayan giants like Dhaulagiri and Changabang and a glittering record of firsts in the Alps and Andes. Yet how Alex climbed was as important as what he climbed. He was a mountaineering prophet, sharing with a handful of contemporaries - including his climbing partner Voytek Kurtyka - the vision of a purer form of alpinism on the world's highest peaks. One Day As A Tiger, John Porter's revelatory and poignant memoir of his friend Alex MacIntyre, shows mountaineering at its extraordinary best and tragic worst - and draws an unforgettable picture of a dazzling, argumentative and exuberant legend.
Author: Walt Unsworth Publisher: Mountaineers Books ISBN: 9780898866704 Category : Mountaineering Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
After John Hunt's successful 1953 expedition he wrote in his diary that at least the Everest story was finished. In fact, it had scarcely begun. The first ascent was the end of a chapter but far from the end of the story. Since those days, well over 300 men and women have stood on the summit of the world's highest mountain, some of them several times, seeking new routes, faster times, or simply to be numbered among the elite who have stood on the roof of the world. Everest: The Mountaineering History tells the truth about many of the world's mountaineering heroes, about the incompetence, the pettiness, and rages, as well as the courage and skill.
Author: Simon Thompson
Author: Robert Lock Graham Irving
Author: Simon Thompson
Author: Colin Wells
Author: Simon Bainbridge
Author: Maurice Isserman
Author: Chris Bonington
Author: Scott Ellsworth
Author: Phil Kelly
Author: John Porter
Author: Walt Unsworth