Learned but thoroughly scurrilous round up of the British climbing scene since its inception. Contains over 600 tounge-in-cheek potted biographies of British climbers mainly dead, but some living - the writs will fly.
A flawed masterpiece. It's a great source of a huge amount of information but according to several of the subjects still living, the information about themselves is not accurate. Needless to say these people are not great fans of this book and possibly with good reason in some cases. In others however, stories may have seen the light of day that their subjects would have preferred to remain buried and forgotten.
In any case, as the author says in his introduction, "... there will be at least four groups of people who will hate this book:
1) Everyone who is in it.
2) Everyone who isn't in it.
3) Bearded men in comfortable cardigans who attend mountain literature festivals.
4) People who post on internet forums."
- which would be just about all of you then...
Very small black and white photos.
By the talented and humorous Colin Wells.
Card cover, 21cm x 15cm, a massive 575 pages.
Published 2008.
ISBN: 978-0955660108.
Warning - may contain nuts!