Mountains of the Mind, A History of a Fascination

This a captivating and brilliantly written book by a mountaineer who is also a cultural historian and is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The author first caught the bug from his grandfather in the Highlands and was hooked both by the experience and reading about it in classic books on climbing. The book traces the history of our attitude to mountains intertwined with the history of geology (Thomas Burnet, James Hutton, Sir Charles Lyell) from the 17th century onwards, and one becomes aware of the remarkable transformation of the imagination that has occurred. A pivotal point occurs during the 19th century when people like Sir Leslie Stephen and John Ruskin extolled the exhilaration of the Alps, and Mont Blanc was climbed for the first time. It is startling to learn that this mountain alone has claimed 1,000 lives and that an average of one climber a day dies during the season in the Alps every year. So why are people drawn to this activity? Part of the answer is what Macfarlane calls 'the pursuit of fear', which he explains with several graphic and spine-chilling experiences of his own. The book culminates in a chapter on Everest, with a special emphasis on George Mallory, whose body was discovered only a few years ago. Mallory climbed 'under the influence of 300 years of changing attitudes towards the mountains' which is expressed in his 'love for height, for views, for ice, for glaciers, for remoteness, for the unknown, for summits, and for risks and fear'. If you are one of those on whom mountains exert an 'attractive force upwards', then this book must go in your next pile of holiday reading.