Mallory of Everest

by Showell Styles

George Leigh Mallory died on Everest more than forty years ago. He had failed to climb the highest mountain in the world. Other men have since succeeded, yet Mallory's name is forever associated with Everest. Why is this so?

The answer may be found in this book, in which Showell Styles, himself a Himalayan climber, relates the history of Everest from its discovery, through the heroism and tragedy of Mallory's three attempts on the great mountain, to the present day.

No superman, Mallory was a very human hero who challenged the world's most treacherous peak before anyone knew the effects of high altitudes on men. The saga of Everest which ended with Mallory's death in 1924 is as compelling a story as that of Hillary's triumphant victory in 1953.

--From the first American edition

174 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Aka Glyn Carr

Frank Showell Styles was a Welsh writer and mountaineer.

Showell Styles was born in Four Oaks, Birmingham and was educated at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, Sutton Coldfield. Known to his friends as 'Pip', Showell Styles' childhood was spent in the hills of North Wales where he became an avid mountaineer and explorer. During the Second World War, Styles joined the Royal Navy and was posted in the Mediterranean, but even there he walked and climbed as much as he could.

An aspiring writer, Styles already had articles published in Punch, before setting out to make his living as an author. His first novel, Traitor’s Mountain, was a murder mystery set on and around Tryfan in Wales. He became a prolific writer with over 160 books published for children as well as adults. In addition to historic naval adventure fiction such as the Midshipman Quinn and Lieutenant Michael Fitton series set during the Napoleonic Wars, and non-fiction works on mountains and such as The Mountaineer’s Weekend Book, he wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym of Glyn Carr, and humorous pieces as C.L. Inker.

For walkers visiting Snowdonia for the first time, Styles' The Mountains of North Wales is monumentally inspirational, written by a sure hand and with a firm conviction and love of these mountains.

Reviews

[Sarah (Presto agitato) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though the title suggests that this book is a biography of George Mallory, who attempted to climb Mount Everest in the 1920s, it mentions his non-Everest life very little. It's more of a retelling of the Everest expeditions of 1921, 1922, and 1924. It's a bit sloppy (if the book is called Mallory of Everest, why is the picture on the cover of George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce?) A better alternative for those who want a book that sums up the expeditions is Sir Francis Younghusband's The Epic of Mount Everest. Younghusband was the chairman of the Mount Everest Committee, and his 1926 book, which drew on the individual expedition books from those years, is more accurate and, oddly, probably more racially sensitive than Styles' book, written in the 1960s.