Up and About: The Hard Road to Everest by Doug Scott, £24
CLIMBER’S autobiographies can be a bit of a mixed bag.
No matter how impressive their feats are in real life, their writing ability often only serves to remind us why they made their careers as climbers, not authors.
Thankfully, although Doug Scott’s autobiography never reaches the heights of the best of mountaineering literature (Joe Simpson and Andy Kirkpatrick take a bow), it is still an absorbing account of the early part of his climbing career.
The first of two volumes of his life story, Up and About: The Hard Road to Everest begins with Scott’s birth in Nottingham, and covers his earliest escapades on gritstone edges to the 1975 ascent of the south west face of Everest that made him (albeit it briefly) a household name.
As well as relaying the literal ups and downs of the biggest walls and highest mountains in the world, Scott writes with honesty about the emotional and personal peaks and troughs of a life where family relationships are put under strain and life itself is so often at risk.
Published by Verebrate Publishing
GILES BROWN
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