The Moth and the Mountain
The untold story of Britain’s most mysterious mountaineering legend – Maurice Wilson – and his heroic attempt to climb Everest alone.
Summary
In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceived his own crazy, beautiful plan: he would fly a Gipsy Moth aeroplane from England to Everest, crash land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit – all utterly alone.
Wilson didn’t know how to climb. He barely knew how to fly. But he had pluck, daring and a vision – he wanted to be the first man to stand on top of the world. Traumatised by his wartime experiences and leaving behind a trail of broken hearts, Wilson believed that Everest could redeem him.
This is the tale of an adventurer unlike any you have ever encountered: an unforgettable story about the power of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Maurice Wilson is a man written out of the history books – dismissed as an eccentric and a charlatan by many, but held in the highest regard by renowned mountaineers such as Reinhold Messner. The Moth and the Mountain restores him to his rightful place in the annals of Everest and in doing so attempts to answer that eternal question – why do we climb mountains?
Reviews
“A wonderful adventure story, beautifully told. Based on years of painstaking archival research, Ed Caesar’s The Moth and the Mountain brings us a modern-day myth with a beguiling, impossible hero from a vanished era of empire, one man on an epic quest that is by turns gripping and heartbreaking.”
Adam Higginbotham
Author of Midnight in Chernobyl
“One of the best books ever written about the early attempts to conquer Everest. A fine, fine slice of history by a truly special writer who proves time and time again that he is among the best of his generation”
Dan Jones
Author of The Plantagenets
“An urgent and humane story that invites not mockery of a madman, but pity and admiration. A small classic of the biographer’s art.”
James McConnachie
The Sunday Times
“A riveting tale of trauma, spiritual awakening and postwar derring-do … a gem of a book … meticulously researched” (Book of the Week)
Observer
“A story of adventure and war, of eccentricity and courage, of love and secrets and of the overwhelming urge one man had to climb the world’s highest mountain. Ed Caesar writes like a dream, beautifully piecing together Maurice Wilson’s life with compassion and intelligence. It’s hard to imagine a finer tribute to one of Everest’s forgotten heroes.”
Elizabeth Day
Author of How to Fail
“This bonkers ripping yarn of derring-don’t is a hell of a ride … scrupulously researched … Maurice Wilson was a one-off, quite outside the ordinary run of people, and The Moth and the Mountain is a “sorry, beautiful, melancholy, crazy” tribute to a man who, like a leaf in autumn, burnt brightest just before he fell.”
John Self
The Times
Awards
Telegraph Sports Book Award
A Sunday Times Biography of the Year
The Telegraph Sports Book of the Year
Purchase
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