John Keay

High Altitude, Low Profile

Everest: The First Ascent – The Untold Story of Griffith Pugh, the Man who Made It Possible

By

Rider Books 400pp £20 order from our bookshop

It’s fair to say that Dr Lewis Griffith Cresswell Evans Pugh was not the most appreciated member of the 1953 expedition to Mount Everest. In The Conquest of Everest, the award-winning film of the expedition, Pugh appeared just twice, once in a catatonic state to demonstrate how oxygen deprivation affected the brain, and once in the process of subjecting an ‘unfortunate’ climber to what the narrator called a ‘not very popular’ experiment. This apparently involved a ‘contraption of glass and rubber’ to which the subject was connected, before being made to work out until he dropped.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Why did the 'bold and determined' Empress Matilda never manage to become Queen regnant? Peter Marshall reviews a n… ,
    • From the Archive: Martyn Bedford on Ian McEwan's 'Atonement' ,
    • In 'Silenced Voices' reports the ongoing story of the human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been… ,
    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    Follow Us