Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps

The most hair-raising, hilarious account of the birth of mountaineering ever written. ..Above the pastures of Switzerland, it was long believed, dragons and ghosts inhabited the realms of ice and snow. No-one in their right mind considered climbing into these inhospitable regions - and certainly not for pleasure. In the late enlightenment period, however, certain scientific gentlemen began to turn their minds to the highest places. What would they tell us about our atmosphere, about weather, about glaciers? And so they set off, early pioneers like xx de Saussure, armed with gallons of good wine, roast fowl, theodolites and barometers, walking in their ordinary clothes up the glaciers of Switzerland into the unknown. ..But then the British came on the scene, and mountain-climbing as an obsession, an art form and a sport was born. Public schoolboys, scientists, showmen, the daftly amateurish and the fiendishly competative were all entranced by the majesty and challenge of the great mountains, which they vanquished peak by peak. By the end of the century only the suicidally dangerous north faces of the Eiger and Matterhorn remained to be climbed by proteges of Hitler and Mussolini. ..'.this is an epic piece of non-fiction that has all the exuberance of the best thrillers.' Publishing News ..'Fleming's mix of heroic adventure and gloriously eccentric characters makes this .a gripping study of man's conquest of the Alps.' The Bookseller