“Much has been written about Mallory’s mysterious end, but this graceful, meticulous biography should revive appreciation for his achievement as a philosopher of mountaineering, the man who wrote of one Alpine summit, ‘Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves.’”
—Outside magazine
“A masterful achievement—impeccably researched, beautifully written—a delight to read. Without question, the Gillmans have written the definitive biography of an utterly fascinating man.”
—Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air
“This vivid, illustrated biography is both a moving tribute to Mallory and a fresh reappraisal of the man and the legends surrounding him…Among the spate of recent books on Mallory’s Everest expeditions, this biography stands out for its well-rounded, sensitive portrait of a restless, thoughtful adventurer.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The Gillmans have assembled an astonishing trove of new information, presenting it with the skill of a tightly plotted novel…In The Wildest Dream, we have a biography that succeeds in piercing the myth of the simple hero to unveil the man in all his real-world complexity. A splendid literary achievement.”
—Rock & Ice
“This engaging and sensitive biography is perhaps the best, most rounded portrait of a surprisingly versatile and restless individual. The Wildest Dream is a well-rounded success. Mallory the scholar, lover, husband, climber, and adventurer are all portrayed here. This is a moving portrait of a complex and sympathetic man.”
—Seattle Times
“Just when we thought we knew almost everything about George Leigh Mallory, along come the Gillmans with what must surely be regarded as the definitive biography. Through assiduous research and judicious appraisal, they cast much new light on that most gallant and enigmatic of mountaineers.”
—David Roberts, author of The Last Explorer and Escape Routes
“This is a finely-drawn portrait of an adventurer of the early twentieth century.”
—Booklist
“A finely wrought and meticulously detailed biography…It is at once compelling and evocative.”
—Joe Simpson, author of Touching the Void
“An astonishing trove of new information…presented with the skill of a tightly plotted novel…Finally we have a biography that succeeds in piercing the many simple myths that have accreted about this very complex man. The Gillmans have unearthed much new evidence. This biography is a tour de force and a most satisfying literary achievement.”
“This exemplary biography of Mallory, which draws upon much new material, puts the man in all his many perspectives.”
—London Spectator
“A biography of unsettling intimacy…conveying the charisma and grace of Mallory…Compelling reading. This is a great adventure story with a captivating central character.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Compulsive stuff. The Gillmans strike a fine balance between Mallory’s different worlds. They handle the issue of Mallory’s sexuality with great sensitivity as well as providing a wonderful snapshot of that era. This book probably provides the last word that needs to be said about him.”
—Doug Scott, author of Shisha Pangma
“I finished [the book] thoroughly absorbed and reluctant to put it down.”
—High
“Perhaps the book’s greatest achievement will be to redress the avalanche of cliché and self-justification that has surrounded the discovery of George Mallory’s mortal remains.”
—Climber
“A grand journey, insightful, concise, moving.”
—Tom Hornbein, author of Everest: The West Ridge
“The Wildest Dream is mountaineering biography at its best. A fascinating life, an interior journey coupled with exterior adventure, and well told, too.”
—Sunday London Mail
“This is a quite splendid book written by two people who excel at creating the atmosphere of a climb…They tell a balanced story that has all the hallmarks of a tragedy but somehow ends as a triumph.”
—BBC History
“By building up the layers of detail, the Gillmans create a rich portrait of a man who defies facile categorization.”
—Daily Telegraph
“A poignant story, handsomely told.”
—Yorkshire Post
“A tale as intense as the hill itself…tautly researched and wrapped for those, like me, intrigued at what made Mallory.”
—Glasgow Herald
“A fine, balanced, vivid, insightful and judicious book—by far the best and most intelligent account of its over-exposed, under-considered subject.”
—Jim Perrin, editor, Mirrors in the Cliffs
“[Evokes], with almost mystical power, the sense of his absolute compulsion to strive for success on the mountain, and yet to do this out of the need to serve his highest ideal, his love for Ruth.”
—George Mallory II, grandson of George Mallory
“Fascinating and engrossing…I found it wonderfully readable and I gained a new view of my grandfather.”
—Rick Millikan, grandson of George Mallory
“The Gillmans’ biography of Mallory is both delicate and quite fascinating in the connection it reveals between climbing and art. It shows us, admirably, that George Mallory lived both an outward public life of adventure and a private life as a complex, loving, and likeable man.”
—Judges’ citation for the 2000 Boardman-Tasker Award
George Mallory with his mother Annie and sisters Avie (left) and Mary. The photograph was probably taken in 1889, when George was three and the family was living at Newton Hall, Mobberley, where George was born. (Photo credit: Mollie and Sally Dalglish)
George and the family dog Springer at Hobcroft House around 1894, when George was eight. The Mallory family lived at the house from 1892 to 1904, when they moved from Mobberley to Birkenhead. (Photo credit: Angela Gresham-Cooke)
George at the end of his first year at Winchester in 1901, when he was fifteen, together with his first letter home, written in September 1900. (Photo credit: Angela Gresham-Cooke)
George was an accomplished all-around sportsman. He was the best gymnast at Winchester (he is top center in the group). (Photo Credit: Mollie and Sally Dalglish)
He took up rowing at Cambridge. Seated second from left, he captained the Magdalene College eight in its triumphant 1908 season. (Photo credit: Stella Longridge)
Family reunion for the silver wedding anniversary of George’s parents, Herbert and Annie, in June 1907. George is in the back row with Mary (left) and Avie. Annie is seated in the center, with Herbert to the left and her mother—“Grandma Jebb”—to the right, flanked by two aunts. Trafford is sitting with Springer. (Photo credit: Salkeld Collection)
Avie’s wedding, at Mobberley, in 1910, when she married Harry Longridge. Left to right: Mary Longridge, George, George’s sister Mary, Robert Longridge, Barbara Blood from the Birkenhead doctor’s family, Trafford. (Photo credit: Mollie and Sally Dalglish)
George, aged twenty, with Arthur Benson outside Hinton Hall, Benson’s home near Cambridge, in December 1906. Benson considered the photograph grotesque—he said that George appeared “impish,” and that he was “like an old bear.” (Photo credit: Salkeld Collection)
George with Avie in his study at Pythagoras House, his lodgings during his fourth and final Cambridge year, 1908–09. (Photo credit: Mollie and Sally Dalglish)
The halcyon years at Pen y Pass. George, right, with Cottie Sanders—later Mary Anne O’Malley—and her brother Jack. (Photo credit: Mollie and Sally Dalglish)
George and Siegfried Herford in December 1913, with Snowdon’s Crib Goch ridge behind. Geoffrey Winthrop Young took the photograph after the three had spent a magical day on Lliwedd. Both Herford and Jack Sanders were killed at Ypres. (Photo credit: Geoffrey Winthrop Young/Alpine Club)
The dashing Geoffrey Winthrop Young, who dubbed George “Galahad” and acted as his mentor, guide, and sponsor in the mountaineering world (Photo credit: Salkeld Collection)
Young took the only known photograph of George climbing in the Alps as they descended the Moine Ridge of Mont Blanc on August 10, 1909. (Photo credit: Geoffrey Winthrop Young/Alpine Collection)
The Bloomsbury entanglements and l’Affaire George of 1909. (Above left) James Strachey, standing, with his brother Lytton. (Above right) The artist Duncan Grant, left, with Maynard Keynes (Photo credit: National Portrait Gallery, London; Michael Holroyd)
In 1911, George posed for a series of nude photographs taken by Grant at his studio in Brunswick Square. George told Grant: “I am profoundly interested in the nude me.” (Photo credit: Henrietta Garnet/Tate Gallery)
Ruth Turner, George’s “one true vision … brave and true and sweet,” as a teenager. He was twenty-seven, she twenty-one, when they fell in love in Italy at Easter, 1914. (Photo credit: Clare Millikan and family)
Ruth and George were married at Godalming on July 29, 1914, six days before Britain and Germany went to war. Photographed here in his army uniform, George survived sixteen months on the western front. (Photo credit: Salkeld Collection)
The Mallorys’ first child, Clare, photographed with Ruth at around three months old, was born at the Holt, their home in Godalming, in September 1915. (Photo credit: Clare Millikan and family)
In May 1917, George was sent home from France to have an operation on the ankle he broke in a climbing fall in 1909. As depicted in the watercolor painted by her sister Mildred (Clare’s “Auntie Mill”), Ruth and Clare visited George in the Officers’ Hospital at Portland Place, London, after the operation. (Photo credit: Paul Morgan)
George, photographed at Westbrook with Clare in 1917, spent seventeen months in Britain before returning to the western front in September 1918 for the final push of the war. (Photo credit: Clare Millikan and family)
In 1919, after demobilisation, George returned to his teaching post at Charterhouse school, whose towers are visible in the background as he sits on the wall of the loggia at the Holt. (Photo credit: Clare Millikan and family)
At Easter 1919, the Pen y Pass climbing parties were revived. George bought a second-hand car, an American Studebaker-Flanders (1912 model), for the occasion: helping with a push start, while George takes the wheel, are Ruth (left, at rear), Len Young (seated, left of George) and Geoffrey Young (to George’s right). (Photo credit: Marianne Nevel)
The Pen y Pass party, Easter 1919. Back row standing, left to right: W. R. Reade, unknown, unknown, Ursula Nettleship, Marjorie Turner (“Aunt Marby”), Kitty O’Brien, Ruth Mallory, Raymond Bicknell, Conor O’Brien, Harold Porter, Geoffrey Winthrop Young, Claude Elliott, Colonel Rathbone. Center row seated: Len Young (wearing scarf), Glen Bicknell, Mrs. H. V. Reade, H. V. Reade, George Mallory. Front row seated: unknown, Mrs. Bartram (wearing white jacket), unknown, Rivers Arundel, Rupert Thomson, Ferdy Speyer, F. H. Slingsby, Geoffrey Bartram. (Photo credit: David Robertson/H. E. L. Porter)
After George’s death in 1924, Ruth and the children returned to live with her father at Westbrook.
Ruth took the children—left to right, Berry, John and Clare—on seaside vacations, and (below left) on picnics: Ruth is wearing a floral hat, front left, and Berry, Clare, and John form the trio at the back. (Below right) Ruth, about age forty here, remarried at forty-eight in 1939, but died of cancer three years later. (Photo credit: Marianne Nevel; Clare Millikan and family)
Ruth brought up the children as free spirits. “She made a conscious decision not to over-protect us,” recalled John, who is to the left in the picture, with Clare and Berry above him, photographed on a family vacation, possibly in Brittany. (Photo credit: Clare Millikan and Family)
Clare, photographed in California in 1999, kept and treasured the pottery her mother had painted. (Photo credit: Peter Gillman)
In 1999 John Mallory, on a visit from South Africa, returned to the Holt in Godalming and, for the first time since 1924, saw the room where he was born. (Photo credit: Peter Gillman)
George’s closest companion on the month-long trek across the Tibetan plateau in 1921, much of it undertaken on mules, was the dependable Guy Bullock, right, George’s former friend at Winchester, whom he called his “stable-companion.” (Photo credit: Royal Geographical Society)
The eight members of the 1921 expedition. Back row, left to right, Bullock, Morshead, Wheeler, Mallory. Front row, Heron, Wollaston, Howard-Bury, Raeburn. The ninth member and original climbing leader, Alexander Kellas, died during the approach march. (Photo credit: Royal Geographical Society)
The 1922 expedition, photographed by John Noel at the Everest Hotel, Darjeeling, before the trek across Tibet. Back row: Crawford, Norton, Mallory, Somervell, Morshead, Wakefield; front row: Strutt, Bruce, Finch. (Photo credit: John Noel Photographic Collection)
The 1922 and 1924 expeditions set up base camp at 16,500 feet at the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier. In John Noel’s photograph, the North Face of Everest, with the north-east ridge forming the skyline to the left of the summit, is still ten miles away. (Photo credit: Royal Geographical Society)
The 1922 team members adopted different techniques for fording rivers during the trek across Tibet. Arthur Wakefield took off his boots. Howard Somervell removed his pants. George Mallory, uninhibited as ever, went all the way. (Photo credit: Royal Geographical Society)
On May 21, 1922, climbing without oxygen equipment, George (left) and Norton, together with Somervell, who took the photograph, reached just below 27,000 feet on the north ridge. (Photo credit: Royal Geographical Society)
George in the United States: In early 1923 George made a lecture tour of the northeastern United States and Canada, but it was a financial failure. (Photo credit: Alpine Club)
In October 1923, Sandy Irvine, then twenty-one, inexperienced but enthusiastic, was selected for the 1924 expedition. He was photographed while skiing at Murren in Switzerland, a month before the expedition left Britain. (Photo credit: Julie Summers)
George got to know Irvine, right, during the voyage to India on the SS California in March 1924. He found Irvine “sensible and not highly strung” and dependable “for everything except conversation.” (Photo credit: Salkeld Collection)
The 1924 expedition, photographed at base camp by John Noel. Back row, left to right: Irvine, Mallory, Norton, Odell and John Macdonald, a dispatch runner for The Times. Front, Shebbeare, Geoffrey Bruce, Somervell, Beetham. (Photo credit: John Noel Photographic Collection)
During the 1924 approach march, George pursued his interest in skinny-dipping, this time in a pool near Pedong in Sikkim. Two fellow swimmers, Irvine and Odell, were out of shot. (Photo credit: Royal Geographical Society)
Noel Odell, pursuing his interest in geology, took this photograph of limestone formations at the entrance of the Rongbuk Valley. George (right) is pulling on his gloves while Irvine (left) is wearing his motorcycle helmet and goggles against the sun and cold. Center is Bentley Beetham. (Photo credit: Noel Odell/Peter Odell)
On April 26, 1924 the climbers crossed the Pang La, a high pass thirty-five miles from Everest, where Noel Odell took this photograph. Irvine, right, and George, center in brimmed hat, lay and gazed at Everest, rising left on the horizon, with its familiar, ominous plume of cloud extending from the summit. (Photo credit: Salkeld Collection)
On June 4, Norton, photographed by Somervell, came within 1000 feet of the summit before turning back because of dehydration, exhaustion, and snow blindness. (Photo credit: Somervell Collection)
Photographed for the last time by Noel Odell at 8:40 A.M. on June 6, 1924, George and Irvine, back to camera, wearing his oxygen equipment, prepare to depart. Shortly before 9 A.M. they left the desolate North Col for their summit attempt. (Photo credit: Noel Odell/Peter Odell)
The memorial cairn to George and Irvine, together with Kellas, who died in 1921, and the seven Sherpas avalanched in 1922, was built at base camp on June 14, the day before the expedition began its long journey home. (Photo credit: John Noel Photographic Collection)