Eric Shipton is generally accepted to be one of the great mountain explorers of the twentieth century, an exemplar of self-reliant and simple travel. He began climbing in the little-visited Dauphine region of the Alps in the twenties, and on Africa's Mount Kenya. Throughout the thirties he was continually travelling and climbing in the Himalaya and the Karakoram. He made the first ascent of Kamet in 1931 the highest peak to be climbed at that time), explored the approaches to Nanda Devi (1934), mapped and explored the remote glaciers and mountains north and west of K2 (1937 and 1939) and played a major part in four attempts on Everest. The names of his companions on these journeys read like a pre-war hall of fame: Smythe, Tilman, Longland, Wager, Wyn Harris, Odell, Greene, Auden, Spender (the last three being brothers of the famous writers).
