Climbing Days

Climbing Days is a special book, not quite like anything I have ever read before, and a law unto itself. It’s a wayward, funny, warm, wandering, open, inspiring journey back into the lives of two remarkable people, and out into the remarkable landscapes they explored.

[A]n affectionate portrait... For non-climbers, the attractions of mountaineering might seem inexplicable, but Richards conveys much of the thrill and sense of achievement. The resulting book is an entertaining and absorbing account of past and present relationships forged amid extreme physical endeavour.

Climbing Days is the most enormous fun… Richards has something of Jerome K Jerome about him. It’s a miracle he lived to tell this tale and Climbing Days is a wonderful achievement.

Sublime

With its roots in the psychogeographical writing about landscape, this fascinating account of the life of the early twentieth-century pioneering mountaineer Dorothy Pilley eschews objectivity in favour of dramatizing the relationship between writer and subject, melding personal reflection and the process of historical investigation.

[A] totally engaging and satisfying book on every level – as biography, memoir, travelogue and erudite meditation on the restlessness and indomitableness of the human spirit.