|
|
The South
Asian Life & Times - SALT |
|
|||
|
Contents Adventure & Sport Five
Ultimate Everest Apa
Sherpa-21 Times
|
|
||||
|
Coronation Everest By Jan Morris Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition (7 April
2003)
Written at a time when the world was obsessed with
mountains, Coronation Everest is not just an account of the first successful
conquest of Everest, it is journalism at its best. Morris’s brilliant and
chiselled prose, elegant style and a magical command of the English language
make it a very engaging read, despite the fact that it is a 60-year-old
story now. James Morris (Jan Morris now) was The Times
correspondent who accompanied the 1953 Everest expedition up the Khumbu
Icefall and Western Cwm to a camp at 21,000 feet. He was running an
exclusive coverage of the ascent – live for the time! Apart from the story of the historic expedition, the
book is also a travelogue – Morris writes an enthralling description of life
in Kathmandu in the 1950s; the Sherpas, and the logistics of being a
correspondent on such an expedition. While Hillary and Tenzing
made their way up to the higher camps and then the summit, Morris camped at
21,000 feet – truly a feat for someone who had climbed no higher than the
Welsh hills. He was one of the first to meet Hillary and Tenzing as they
descended from the summit, and reached Camp IV (there were nine camps set up
in 1953 – unlike the four camps of today) on 30 May, 1953. They had summited
the previous day and rested at a higher camp. Morris, in a rush to get the
news across to London, went down some 4,000 feet to Base Camp in a single
afternoon. He quickly encoded the great news, passed it to runners, who
handed it over to another person to have it wired to London from Namche
Bazar. The news reached London on the morning of 2 June 1953 – the day of
the young Queen’s coronation. And the day turned into a double celebration.
James Morris the journalist of Everest fame is Jan
Morris today. In the interest of clarity and to avoid confusion, it should
be noted that James Morris, underwent a gender change subsequent to the
original 1958 publication of this book. When the book was released again in
2003, it was under the name which the author had since adopted, Jan Morris.
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2000 - 2013 [the-south-asian.com]. Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. |
|||||
