Ed CaesarRezensionen

Clear and concise if a bit drawn out. Good elaboration on viability and quality of source materials.

A truly compelling and tragic piece of investigative non-fiction writing, this was a story I shall not forget in a hurry. Ed Caesar has done an excellent job in picking up the scattered pieces of a life previously reported mostly incompletely, and compiling a fascinating tale of derring-do, romance, naïveté, and adventure.

Maurice Wilson was a veteran British Army officer of the First World War. Awarded the Military Cross for his bravery during a rearguard battle of the great German Spring Offensive of 1918, one cannot help but wonder how this courageous man’s life might have turned out but for that life-shaping battlefield trauma. A lower middle-class lad from Bradford, Caesar conveys a sense of Wilson’s desire to fit in somewhere in life. He was likely categorised by his contemporaries as “a temporary gentleman”, due to the nature of his wartime commission, and there is certainly a restlessness about Wilson as he chases one elaborate dream after another. Undoubtedly, in the 21st century Wilson would have been diagnosed as suffering from PTSD. Through failed marriages and failed business enterprises, the reader accompanies him to New Zealand, Australia, Africa and north America, as he pursues something that he is never quite successful at achieving. All until he catches Everest fever in the 1920s, in the wake of the doomed Mallory-Irvine expedition of 1924 that captured the attention of so many.

As the roaring 1920s turn into the depression era 1930s, and our protagonist embarks on a highly unconventional ménage-a-trois type relationship with his friends the Evans; Wilson discovers his ‘spiritual’ path - and embraces the romantic notion of flying an airplane to India: to land on the lower foothills near Mt Everest; and then to climb the ascent to the fabled mountain whilst achieving eternal glory as the first man to do so. The problem is, Wilson doesn’t know how to fly, and doesn’t know how to climb mountains. Undaunted, he sets about achieving this very thing. There follows an incredible but undoubtedly captivating account of this unlikely adventure, and the reader is swept along with the excitement and daring of the whole somewhat crazy enterprise. Will certainly make for a thrilling film topic one day.

I expected this to be a knock out fantastic read about a solo Everest climb. It wasn't. It was an interesting story about an individual who survived the brutality of WWI, learned to fly, hiked 300 or so miles in disguise to attempt his climb.

The human spirit, man. Whew.

This story was more about the backstory than the time on the mountain itself.

In May 1933, Maurice Wilson set off from Stag Lane aerodrome in London in a secondhand Gipsy Moth, aiming to fly solo to India and climb Mount Everest when he got there. He had only started flying lessons three months earlier, he had never been to Asia before, and he had no high-altitude mountaineering experience. But he had been injured in the war, held some weird ideas about diet, was subject to quasi-religious revelations, and had an unnecessarily complicated private life, so he was obviously perfectly cut out to be an Eccentric English Adventurer. It was a pity he came from a very ordinary middle-class background in Bradford, but you can't have everything...

Obviously, Wilson didn't succeed in his quest — otherwise we would all have heard of him — and he has long been eclipsed even in the destructive self-deception stakes by more recent giants of British incompetence like Donald Crowhurst, but he got a lot closer to his goal than he had any right to expect. His minimalist approach to mountaineering has been praised by serious climbers like Reinhold Messner, who sees him as a pioneer of the "Alpine style" in the Himalayas.

Journalist Ed Caesar spent some time digging into the sparse traces of Wilson's life, and has managed to find out quite a lot about his background in Bradford, his service as an infantry subaltern in Flanders, and his peripatetic existence in New Zealand, London and South Africa between the end of the war and his sudden decision in late 1932 that he was going to make an Everest attempt. He's also found out a lot from official records about the comical cat and mouse game Wilson played with the officials of the Air Ministry and the India Office who were trying to prevent him from going lumbering into the middle of a complex diplomatic puzzle on the borders of Nepal, Tibet and India.

The resulting book makes a good story, only slightly undermined by Caesar's obvious determination to use all the information that came to hand, whether or not it was relevant, and his occasional clumsiness as a writer. We're never really going to be able to get inside the head of someone as odd and elusive and secretive as Wilson, but Caesar at least manages to show us the influences that might have been at work there. And it's refreshing to see a book like this presented as a straight piece of non-fiction: there must have been a strong temptation to take an imaginative step further and turn it into a novel (and I'm sure someone will, sooner or later), but Caesar holds back from telling us anything we don't have documentary evidence for.

The best stories in life are those that are true... The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War and Everest by Ed Caesar is one of those tales...
"An extraordinary true story about one man’s attempt to salve the wounds of war and save his own soul through an audacious adventure." In the 1930's, World War I British vet, Maurice Wilson decides he is going to "fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit - all utterly alone."

But there is much, much more to Wilson's story. Caesar does an amazing job, piecing together his life, not just the Everest idea. I was fascinated by Wilson, who seemed determined to squeeze out every last moment of living each and every day. That's not to say every day was butterflies and sunshine. There are definitely wounds to his psyche. But Wilson's determination and his strength of mind and body was simply phenomenal. As was his ability to figure out a way to get around the obstacles put in his path, without ever doubting he could.

Caesar explores all of Wilson's - from his home and family, to the war, his wanderings, his marriages and more. Much of this is gleaned from letters and journals of Wilson's that have survived. I liked Caesar's writing style and presentation. Wilson became a person and not just a subject. I'll be looking at some of Caesar's other published items.

I chose to listen to The Moth and the Mountain. The reader was James Langton and he did a great job. He has a British accent which was perfect for both the subject and the writer of this book. His voice was clear and easy to understand. He interpreted the book well, conveying the emotion, action and more with his reading. He has a very expressive voice. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I become much more immersed in a book when I listen to it. The Moth and the Mountain was a fabulous listen - the story of a man who truly lived life.