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. ( )