Reviews and Comments

This is a tremendous book.
It tells the story of two young women in World War 2, one a pilot and one who becomes an SOE agent. It's no real spoiler to say that the latter, the eponymous 'Verity', winds up in the hands of the Gestapo, as this is revealed on the first page anyway. This stands as a warning to all potential readers that there are some harrowing passages, and Wein's writing doesn't shrink from the awfulness but also doesn't overload us with it or overindulge in gory detail. However, there is also a great deal of joy in this book, which shines all the brighter against the dark background.
This is a war story, but it's certainly not just for the genre afficionados. Above all it's a story of friendship and love—not sexual or romantic love but the deep love of two people from very different backgrounds who would probably never have met in peacetime but are thrown together by the upheavals of war.
There are some startling plot twists which only reveal themselves in the second half. I'm not always a fan of plot twists, as they can appear to be thrown in just to 'keep readers on their toes' but there is nothing gratuitous about these.
If I have one quibble, it's that it's labelled as 'Young Adult'. Not that it's unsuitable for young adults, it is, but I worry that this tag may put off older readers who would also love this book.
I took it in as an audiobook and it's beautifully done by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell.

A fascinating book, full of insight.
I picked up this book out of curiosity and was soon fascinated by its account of a city and a culture of which I knew far less than I should: Kabul, seen in the period of relative peace and prosperity between 2001 and 2013.
Taran Khan was born and raised in India but has familial links with Afghanistan. The book unfolds partly as a kind of dialogue between her and her beloved grandfather, who'd made a lifetime's study of Kabul and its culture though he never visited in person. Khan spent several extended periods there and her explorations of the city, often on foot (sometimes against the advice of friends) bring it to life in a way we don't get from conventional history books and news reports. There are chapters on subjects as diverse as drugs and mental health, and the extravagant culture of the 'wedding halls' which sprang up in great numbers during the years in question. I was particularly taken by the chapter on bookshops and libraries, and its testimony to the courage and determination of those who protected Kabul's written heritage and culture during the first period of Taliban rule.
A very moving, elegiac, final chapter records the closing days of Khan's final sojourn in Kabul, as the security situation deteriorates, and as she makes her reluctant farewells. We are left to wonder what has happened to the engaging and spirited characters we've come to know in these pages.
Unreservedly recommended.

Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world, but its prominence in views from places like Darjeeling gave it a renown in the West long before Everest or K2 were fully surveyed and known to be higher. Due to its position and exposure to monsoon weather, it is particularly prone to avalanches and remains one of the most challenging of the world's great mountains. According to Doug Scott, for one, it is also the grandest.
And Scott, who sadly died in 2020, was as well-qualified as anyone to voice such an opinion. He made the front pages when he and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to climb Everest, as part of Chris Bonington's South-West Face expedition, but he climbed all over the world, generally focusing on climbing challenging objectives in the best possible style. In 1977 he and Bonington made the first ascent of The Ogre (Baintha Brakk) in the Karakoram, a climb which became legendary when Scott both broke legs when abseiling from the summit, leading to an epic descent; one of the great survival stories in world mountaineering.
Two years later, Scott, with Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker, made the third ascent of Kangchenjunga; this came 24 years after the first, a measure of the mountain's difficulty. Like previous ascensionists, they stopped a few metres short of the highest point, respecting the beliefs of the Sikkimese people that the summit is home to the gods.
This climb was a mountaineering landmark for several reasons. It established a new route via the North Ridge, but more significantly, it was the first time an 8000-metre peak had been climbed by an expedition which made no use of bottled oxygen. Messner and Habeler had climbed Everest without oxygen the previous year, but the route was already partly prepared by others using it. Scott, Boardman, and Tasker, along with Georges Bettembourg, established the whole route themselves and no oxygen was used anywhere on the mountain. It's very possible to ague that theirs was the greater achievement; it certainly deserves to be at least equally well remembered as that of Messner and Habeler.
A concise but vivid retelling of this climb forms the final section of this book, but before then we are treated to a comprehensive account of this great mountain. Geology, geography, climate and vegetation are all covered before turning to the human history of the region. There's deep coverage of the early explorations by Westerners, the mapping of the mountain, and the first probes by climbers. Scott is commendably even-handed when dealing with controversial characters like Aleister Crowley and even with the Nazi-sponsored expeditions of the 1930s, though he leaves us in no doubt about leader Paul Bauer's closeness to senior Nazis like Heinrich Himmler and his role in the exclusion of Jews from the German Alpine Club.
All of this reveals that Doug Scott not only displayed a very impressive level of scholarship in researching this book, he also possessed the ability to distil it into highly readable prose; two things which don't automatically go together! It is important to remember that mountains are not merely playgrounds, but mean many things to many different people. And a fuller understanding of a mountain's exploration and climbing history gives us a richer sense of the significance of any one ascent.
I'd like to think that there could be more books like this, giving us the full sweep and context of a mountain's story; the sad thing is that Doug Scott won't be around to write any more of them.

This book is an intriguing blend of two distinct strands: the history of climbing, and the author's own personal journey within the sport.
The subtitle, 'From rock climbing pioneers to Olympic athletes' suggests a particular focus on rock-climbing, and this is generally what we get, but the early stages do consider the wider impulse towards high places. I suspect this is inescapable; much of the genesis of pure rock-climbing is tied up with greater mountaineering, with early climbs in the Lakes and Wales often dismissed as mere 'mountain practice'.
The early part of the history is a familiar tale: Petrarch on Ventoux, Paccard and Balmat on Mont Blanc, Coleridge on Broad Stand (erroneously described as being on Scafell Pike; it's on Scafell). However, we soon get a wider picture, showing how Victorian attitudes, specifically British attitudes, sought to exclude women and working-class people from mountaineering and many other pursuits. The cult of muscular Christianity and the oppressive insistence on amateurism (which can be said to have skewed the development of most sports far into the 20th century) come under scrutiny. And we see how women refused to be so confined far more often than is still generally supposed: but therein lies another story, how their exploits were under-reported. As Reych says, “It’s increasingly apparent that Victorian society’s rigid ideals of acceptability did not always accurately reflect real life.”
As the story moves into the 20th century, I didn't find too much that was revelatory, but it's well told and, on the whole, well-balanced. Reych, like many before, does succumb to the temptation of labelling (at least implicitly) Brown and Whillans as the first working-class men to make a real mark as rock-climbers. This is more than a little unfair to men like Jim Birkett and Bill Peascod, both active in the Lake District a good decade before Joe and Don, and there are many more, in the UK and beyond.
What Born to Climb does do particularly well is bring the story right up to date, with the growth of competition climbing, culminating in its inclusion in the Tokyo Olympics. Did those Games give us a greater breakthrough star, in any sport, than Janja Garnbret?
Interspersed with the history are chapters covering notable stages in Zofia Reych's own progress, from early days in the Polish Tatras via London, and an MA in Anthropology, to wild nights in Llanberis to current home in Fontainebleau. It's all fascinating and highly entertaining; my question is whether the personal memoir is fully integrated with the history. I feel that other authors, like Robert Macfarlane in Mountains of the Mind, have been more successful in finding the connections that allow personal experience to illuminate the wider narrative. At times Born to Climb feels to me like two books co-existing within one cover; but both are books that I'd be happy to read on their own. In fact I personally would have been very happy to have more of Reych's own story, not least key experiences around gender and identity; we are left with the intriguing fact that someone who self-identifies as non-binary is founder and director of the Women’s Bouldering Festival.
None of these mild reservations should deter anyone from reading this book. They say you should always leave the table wanting more, and I do.

There weren't many books in my grandparents' home. One of the few that I remember was The Kangchenjunga Adventure by Frank Smythe. Sadly they died while I was still quite young, before I discovered mountaineering for myself, and I never had the chance to ask how they came by it. Nor do I know what happened to the book. Given their age it could well have been an early edition (and might now be quite collectable).
I was too young to make a serious go at reading the book, but I certainly looked through it in search of pictures. Anyway, however it came to be there, it left some kind of mark on me and predisposed me to the impression that it was one of the classics of mountain literature, certainly of the prolific period between the wars, if not of all time. So I was both intrigued and delighted to see that Vertebrate has digitally republished The Kangchenjunga Adventure, as part of its outstanding effort to keep such classics available to new generations of readers. And I was both intrigued and slightly nervous to see how the real thing stood up to my misty conception of it.
The short answer is that it stands up pretty well. The long answer is, as you'd expect, slightly more nuanced. The title may raise expectations that the book is all about a bold but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to climb the world's third highest peak. In fact what it delivers is either less than that – if you're only interested in the glamour of what we now call the 8000-metre peaks – or more, if you are interested in a wider story of exploration and exploratory mountaineering.
In 1930 Frank Smythe joined a German-led expedition to the Kangchenjunga region. Within the time constraints of the pre-monsoon period – especially bearing in mind that the monsoon tends to strike Kangchenjunga earlier and with more force than Everest – the full list of its achievements is impressive, with several peaks climbed and cols crossed for the first time. Two assaults on Kangchenjunga itself were not very successful, and sadly one saw the death of the Sherpa Chettan in an avalanche.
The crowning achievement was the first ascent of Jonsong Peak (now officially spelled Jongsong). Smythe records its height as 24344ft but it is now given as 7,462 metres (24,482 ft). At the time, this was the highest summit yet reached, though climbers had been considerably higher on Everest. As such, it is an underrated achievement, for several reasons. One is because Jon(g)song Peak was not the primary objective of the expedition. Another is that the record was short-lived, being broken the following year when a team (also including Frank Smythe) climbed Kamet.
As Smythe himself notes, "The ascent of Jonsong Peak proved that four men backed up by good porters are capable of overcoming a great peak.” The expedition may have started from Darjeeling with around 400 porters and 85 mule loads, yet Jongsong Peak was climbed in something approximating to what we'd now call Alpine style.
All this is related, for the most part, in a very straightforward manner. Naturally some elements will seem dated to us now, almost 90 years on. To me, Smythe is a decent writer but not in the same class as his near contemporary Tilman. Some of the descriptive passages may seem florid to modern tastes: “Most fine mornings see the cloudy galleons sweeping up from the steamy Plain of Bengal. Slowly they sail over the green foothills or float in lazy stateliness on the blue hazes of the deep valleys, their keels in shadow, their sails of massive cumuli bellying thousands of feet aloft in the sunlight. As they advance, they are augmented by the warm, moist air currents from the valleys. Magically they grow larger; their girth and height increases every moment; they are sifted by the upward breezes, broken and distorted into all manner of queer forms by vagrant winds; momentarily dissipated by unexpected blasts. They become a mighty fleet and pass in splendid line ahead towards the huge wall of the Himalayas, where they assault in misty surges the snowy bastions of Kangchenjunga."
It's also undeniable that some observations will grate on modern sensibilities: “Narsang waved a hand with characteristic native vagueness.” “The native, of course, lives only in the present; the future holds no interest for him.” And so on; but this apparently patronising attitude does not extend to the Sherpas and there is genuine grief at the death of Chettan: “So died a genuine lover of the mountains, a real adventurer at heart, and one whom members of several Himalayan expeditions will mourn.”
The text is scattered with idiosyncrasies of punctuation. I had to read these sentences more than once: “Suffice to say that Mont Blanc is little more than half the height of Mount Everest, 29,002 feet, Kilimanjaro, 19,700 feet and Mount McKinley, 20,454 feet. The highest peaks of Africa and North America would rank as minor peaks in the Sikkim Himalayas..." Without access to the original, it's impossible to know whether these errors are down to Smythe and his editors or have crept in during the preparation of the digital edition.
Above all what I will retain from this book is a renewed sense of how much mountaineering techniques and technology have changed. Frequent references to step-cutting are just one example. Smythe describes the 'official' expedition boots like this: “They weighed six and a half pounds a pair and each was nailed with sixty clinker and tricouni nails. The soles were built up of layers of felt, rubber and leather and the uppers, which came halfway to the knee, were felt-lined. Crampons supplied with these boots were proportionately heavy and weighed four pounds a pair.” He wore them once, as an experiment, and never again.
As a photographer (with my own memories of taking 25 rolls of 35mm film for a six-week trip to the Karakoram), I was struck by the note that, “I do not think that less than fifty porters were utilised in carrying our cinematographic and photographic apparatus and materials.” I did, however, find the following entirely familiar: “The principal advantage of taking photographs on a mountain is that the mountaineer is thus enabled to stop at frequent intervals and recover his breath. That is why most elderly mountaineers carry cameras. Taking a photograph is a much more convincing excuse for a halt than a bootlace or braces that need adjusting.”
Expeditions like this certainly paved the way for later success on the highest peaks, but Smythe's power of prediction leaves something to be desired: “Curiously enough, Everest is the only great Himalayan peak which can definitely be said to be accessible to mountaineers. Other great peaks may defy all comers for many generations, and among these I would number Kangchenjunga.” Kangchenjunga was first climbed 25 years later.
In the same vein, he suggests, “The only route offering any hope would appear to be that attempted in 1929 by the Munich Expedition.” This was the NE spur, not climbed until 1977; the first ascent was made on the opposite side of the mountain.
Still, the expedition achieved a great deal and added significantly to understanding of the topography of the region as well as to thinking on best practice in climbing high mountains – though I don't think the concentrated liver pills ever caught on.