Pioneering climbing in Scotland the 1930s, combat against Rommel's forces, three years in Nazi prison camps, and a near fatal alpine accident marked W.H.Murray's early life. Three exploratory Himalayan ventures followed including the critical 1951 reconnaissance trip that established the route by which Everest was climbed two years later. Thereafter he built a reputation as a writer and environmental polemicist and was deeply involved with the struggle to protect the Highlands from commercial exploitation.
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
Foreword by Hamish MacInnes
Introductory Note
Early Years
1 Twists of the Thread
2 Siren Song
Pre-War Climbing in Scotland
3 Rocks and Climbers
4 Renaissance: 1930s
5 The Winter Ascent of Garrick’s Shelf
Fortunes of War
6 The Home Front
7 North Africa
8 To Iraq and Cyprus
9 The Battle of the Cauldron
Incarceration
10 Stone Walls: Chieti
11 To Bavaria and Bohemia
12 Brunswick
The Post-War World
13 Home
14 The Right Holds
15 Freedom – Decisions to Make
16 First Steps
17 The Alps: Highs and Lows
First Expeditions to the Himalaya
18 Introduction to the Garhwal
19 To the Rishi Gorge
20 Attempts on Bethartoli Himal and Hunaman
21 Mountaineering and Medicine in Dunagiri
22 The Ascent of Uja Tirche and an attempt on Lampak South
23 Through the Girthi Gorge to Milam
24 The Ralam Pass and Panch Chuli
25 Untrodden Ranges: Around Menlungste and Gaurisankar
Exploring the Api Massif
26 Approach to Api: The Kali Gorge
27 Api and Nampa
28 Yokapahar Himal – Warnings
29 Tibet – Into Chinese Held Territory
30 The Seti Gorge
31 A Meeting with the Rajah of Bajhang
Everest and the Muztagh Tower
32 Everest and the Muztagh Tower: the seemingly impossible overcome
Concerns Closer to Home
33 Return to Scotland
34 The Cragsmen of Lewis
35 The Life of Ben Humble – Tribute to a Fighter
36 A Writer’s World
37 Conservation
38 Tomorrow
Epilogue
Appendices
I Murray’s Books, Plays and Articles
II Sundry Correspondence
III Writing about Climbing and Mountain Landscape
IV The Rob Roy Affair
V Publishing and the Practicalities of the Writing Business
Photographs, Maps and Illustrations
About the Author :
W.H. Murray was born in Liverpool in 1913. Two years later his father was killed at Gallipoli, so his family moved back to Glasgow where Murray spent his childhood, school and college years before beginning a career in banking. He made his first climbs in 1934 and later joined a talented group of climbers in the Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland. Murray describes how they strove to regain the dynamism of the early Scottish climbing that had been lost in the trauma of the Great War. After surviving long periods as a prisoner of war, attributed by some to his study of philosophy, Murray returned to mountaineering and later took part in key Himalayan expeditions of the 1950s. In 1951 Murray was on the critical reconnaissance that established a potential route up Everest via the Khumbu Icefall. Marrying happily, Murray built a career as a writer and conservationist, writing Highland Landscape, a counsel of protection, for the National Trust of Scotland. Murray died in 1996, and The Evidence of Things not Seen was published posthumously.
Review :
A big, quiet book that resonated beyond the clamour of ego and conquest. – Dermot Somers, Judge, Banff Mountain Festival of Literature and Culture.
This autobiography captures the huge scope of Murray's extraordinary life - I'd wager that many climbers under thirty have read little of Murray, seeing him as a remote figure from the past. This book has changed all that and made him relevant and current. – Ed Douglas, Climber Magazine.
Would it live up to expectations? The answer is a resounding yes. Murray's words of optimism, insight and humility flow from each page, No inflated ego, no cynicism, no backbiting - and no false modesty either. – Jim Curran, High.
Through the concise and page-turning war days we learn that the author spent two years scribing Mountaineering in Scotland on toilet paper. The Gestapo found the then manuscript, interrogated Murray and then destroyed it, believing it was coded intelligence information. Over the next two years Murray describes how he forced himself to rewrite the book. – Jonathan Waterman, American Alpine Journal.
Bill Murray married a poet and the poetic sensibility which so often gives his work its depth is on display here. Its prose enhanced by pages of sumptuous photographs, valuable artefacts of climbing history in themselves, The Evidence of Things Not Seen is the memorial Murray deserves. Like a Highland sunset, his talent flared in glory one final time. – David Rose, The Guardian.
