"Coronation Everest" by Jan Morris

Jan Morris (when he was James) was the Times Correspondent assigned to the 1952 Commonwealth Everest Expedition led by James Hunt which succeeded in being the first to conquer Everest, placing Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay on the top of the world. Morris managed to get the news to England (in the days before ubiquitous communications he used runners to take coded dispatches to the nearest radio transmitting station) just in time for the Coronation of Elizabeth Windsor as Queen of the UK.

What makes this book stand out is the quality of the prose. When Morris describes the mountain or the Sherpas or Nepal or anything he writes simply yet clearly and always uses the perfect word so that the images he conjures up are crystal clear. And he is original too. The classic mountaineer's biography might emphasize the perils and the hardships but Morris tells you of his discomforts and his difficulties so the reader is left in no doubt that the climb is arduous and that many aspects are thoroughly unpleasant. He is refreshingly realistic about the people he encounters too, and their customs and their foibles, and the disgusting food and drink he samples. This is no wonder-eyed traveller's tale but real life in all its shabby glory.

Selected quotes

• "He believed wholeheartedly in living off the country, and was an authority on chang, the glutinous substance used by the Nepalese for beer, and on rakhsi, the methylated spirits with which they foster the wild illusion that they are drinking gin." (C 3)
• "The valley of Katmandu was full of splendid medieval monuments, but there was nowhere quite so remarkable as Bhatgaon, which lies about twelve miles to the east of the capital. It was a town of dark and glowering appearance, instinct with the spirit of the Middle Ages. Its streets were narrow and tortuous, and in them you might well expect to meet the funeral procession of a plague, or mingle with branded slaves, or come across some defiant heretic blazing at the stake." (C 3)
• "While I had always admired Mallory’s famous reason for wanting to climb Everest, I was convinced that it would still be there next week." (C 5)
• "Here and there the valley was dotted with the statuesque figures of the yaks, who seemed to enjoy standing all alone in the wilderness gazing into eternity." (C 5)
• "As a doer of duty he seemed to me invincible; whatever job he was given, the building of a chicken coop or the translation of an Aramaic testament, he would first clothe the task in garments of unapproachable significance, and then proceed to complete it." (C 5)
• "Mallory said it was like a prodigious fang excrescent from the jaw of the earth; so sulky and brooding did it look that morning that I thought it must have a toothache. Great mountains surrounded it on every side, but it looked recognizably the greatest (and nastiest) of them all." (C 5)
• "The icefall of Everest rises two thousand feet or more and is about two miles long. It is an indescribable mess of confused ice-blocks, some as big as houses, some fantastically fashioned, like minarets, obelisks, or the stone figures on Easter Island." (C 6)
• "Sweet thick tea follows, tasting faintly of methylated spirits and strongly of the melted snow which provided the water – a taste, I used to think, desperately compounded of winds and desolation, for a raindrop frozen on the slopes of Everest must be a lonely sort of thing." (C 6)
• "Privacy was an abstract totally beyond their conception, and anyone might walk freely into anyone else’s house." (C 7)
• "During the Abyssinian War the Christian Science Monitor was presented by its correspondent in Ethiopia with a bill for two slaves." (C 8)
• "I do not normally behave in this autocratic way, except at the breakfast table." (C 8)
• "Who could have supposed that I would ever find myself in quite so historically romantic a situation, dashing down the flanks of the greatest of mountains to deliver a message for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II? It was all perfectly – oops, steady, nasty slippery bit! – all perfectly ridiculous." (C 11)

A splendidly original take on heroism.

Other books by James/Jan Morris reviewed in this blog:

• Venice
• Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

October 2011

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Banner in the Sky" by James Ramsay Ullman

This is a fictionalised version of the first ascent of the Matterhorn.

Rudi's father was a famous alpine guide killed while attempting the summit of unconquered mountain The Citadel and Rudi's grieving mother cannot bear the thought that her son might also die. But all Rudi wants to do is climb and he repeatedly truants from his job washing dishes in a hotel kitchen to climb lower slopes and plan an attempt on the Citadel. On one such jaunt he saves the life of a visiting mountaineer who has fallen into a crevasse; this man wants to take Rudi on his attempt to climb the mountain to the top. But can Rudi overcome his family objections, his impetuosity, his inexperience and the formidable mountain itself?

Although this is a children's book it goes into vast descriptive detail - it reminded me of the technical passages in the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ransome which are just as challenging for the non-expert. Ullman was himself a mountaineer and he uses his deep knowledge of the subject. This makes the book incredibly realistic.

The analyses of the plot contains spoilers:

The plot is a classic example of the Hero's Journey. Rudi is a version of Luke Skywalker. The call to adventure is both from the mountain itself, calling to Rudi through the hotel window, and, more literally, from the mountaineer trapped in the crevasse. His boss in the kitchen used to climb with Rudi's father and plays the role of the ancient mentor (Obiwan Kenobe), repeatedly helping to clear obstacles from Rudi's path. There is also a spirit guide in the example of Rudi's dead father. Rudi has three sorts of challenge to overcome: his family, the mountain, but most of all his character.  There are repeated trials of his character and, true to hero form, he fails on the very first. But his final triumph lies in overcoming his selfishness and doing what his dead father would have done. 

The plot is also a classic four-part (three act) structure. Rudi's failure on his first challenge comes at exactly the 25% turning point. At 50% he has a chance to redeem himself and although he repeats the selfish behaviour that led to his first failure, this time he is successful. At the 75% mark his slender body means that he cannot climb with the men and has to be pulled up on a rope ... but almost immediately his slender body means that he can go where the men can't and so he turns the table to become the helper. The key moment of moral decision come at the 85% mark, almost exactly half way through the last quarter, and he makes the wrong choice but again he has the opportunity to redeem himself at 95% and he does, at the cost of failing to achieve his dream. There are only two pages to go when this apparent failure is redeemed with the words "It is Rudi's mountain", words which, even when writing this blog, make my eyes fill with tears.

Some great lines:

• "You cannot put out a fire by wishing it. You cannot bottle the wind." (Ch 3) 
• "His, he well knew, had been the worst of all sins that a mountaineer can commit. He had made others risk their lives to save his." (Ch 6)

A brilliant boys' adventure story. June 2021; 206 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God