Top People

Luke Hughes

• Ghosts of Everest: The Authorised Story of the Search for Mallory & Irvine by Jochen Hemmleb and Larry Johnson
  Macmillan, 206 pp, £20.00, October 1999, ISBN 0 333 78314 X
• Lost on Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine by Peter Firstbrook
  BBC, 244 pp, £16.99, September 1999, ISBN 5 635 55129 7
• The Last Climb: The Legendary Everest Expeditions of George Mallory by David Breashears and Audrey Salkeld
  National Geographic, 240 pp, £25.00, October 1999, ISBN 0 7922 7538 1

Last year a group of American climbers on Everest discovered the body of George Mallory, the British mountaineer who died on the mountain in 1924, close to the summit, which he and his companion, Andrew Irvine, may or may not have reached. Since then there has been an unseemly rush to cash in on the discovery with at least six books, a poor film made by the BBC, several websites and the syndication of photographic rights across the globe. Peter Firstbrook’s book is written from a very English perspective, Ghosts of Everest from a very American one: neither takes up the really important issues. The Last Climb began life as a history of all the early Everest expeditions but, once Mallory’s body was found, the publishers rushed to get it out, ahead of schedule.