Great to spend an unseasonably sunny April afternoon exploring Oxford’s greener pastures ahead of an appearance at the Oxford Literary Festival in conversation with mountain historian Mick Conefrey.
It was a pleasure to meet Mick, ‘one of our finest gazetteers of the Himalaya’, whose accounts of expeditions to climb Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga have been a real source of inspiration to me – and too of information.
Mick’s most recent book, Fallen, situates an unflinching examination of the real George Mallory amid the drama of the fateful 1924 expedition, making for a heady mix of narrative verve and meticulously researched non-fiction.
It was fascinating to be in conversation with Mick, and to understand the deep dive he has taken into the life – and death – of ‘one of history’s most well-known and least understood adventurers’.