The Hunt for Mount Everest

The legend of Everest begins, in most accounts, with the first British expedition of 1921. And yet the quest to identify, measure and – at last – set foot on Everest was itself a remarkable feat. ‘The Hunt for Everest’ ends where the popular legend begins: it is the seldom-told account of that happened before.

The height of Everest was first measured in 1850, but the closest any westerner got to Everest during the next 71 years was 40 miles. It is a story that traverses the Alps, the Himalayas, Nepal and Tibet, the British Raj, the Anglo-Russian ‘Great Game’, the disastrous First Afghan War, and the phenomenal Survey of India. A tale of high drama, its prize attracted larger-than-life characters - George Everest, Francis Younghusband, George Mallory, Lord Curzon, Edward Whymper - and a few quiet heroes: Alexander Kellas, the 13th Dalai Lama, and Charles Bell. It drew together spies, adventurers, renegades, hundreds of mules, camels, bullocks, yaks, and two zebrules.

As we approach the centenary of the first expedition this book tells the fascinating and overlooked sagas of exploration, engineering, diplomacy, daring, persistence, and even conflict that made possible that moment in June 1921 when two English climbers became the first westerners (and almost certainly the first human beings) to set foot on Everest - so claiming the last remaining major prize in the history of exploration.