Alexander Maitland

When They Were Up, They Were Up

Shipton & Tilman: The Great Decade of Himalayan Exploration

By

Hutchinson 412pp £25 order from our bookshop

The legendary partnership of Eric Shipton and H W Tilman is unique in the history of 20th-century mountaineering. They met for the first time early in 1930 in Kenya, where both were working on coffee plantations: ‘a good life’, Shipton wrote, ‘full of interest and variety, and … a great sense of freedom’.

At this stage, Tilman’s brief climbing experience was confined to the Lake District, while Shipton had climbed in the Swiss Alps, the Bergeller, England, France and Wales. Having rejected a career in law, Shipton’s degree in estate management led to Africa. With Gustav Sommerfelt and Percy Wyn Harris, he climbed the twin peaks of Mount Kenya in 1929, the first successful ascent since Halford Mackinder’s pioneering venture thirty years earlier.

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

    • 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… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    Follow Us