Eric Shipton: Everest and Beyond

This book is a competently written biography. It puts into an easily-grasped perspective the full gammut of Shipton's climbing and exploring career and it gives much on his personal life and what he did between expeditions that is not available from his own books. It deals dispassionately but sensitively with such issues as the leadership debacle that preceded the '53 Everest expedition, and shares Shipton's views of his climbing companions, Tilman's reticence, for example. One thing that tickled my interest was that it reveals the sources of many of the pithy comments and aphorisms that have passed into mountaineering lore, such as Tom Bourdillon's comment on food: "The main thing is that there should be some". I couldn't put this book down.

This book together with Shipton's "The Six Mountain- Travel Books" and "That Untravelled World" let you fully understand the life of the great mountain explorer. Blanks in his life, never told in his books, are finally filled up!