Mountaineering in Scotland

Description

Published by J.M. Dent, London, 1947, 1st Edition, previous owner’s RSM on front free endpaper, D/w (a couple of small repairs, in protective sleeve),  Nr. Fine.  William Hutchison Murray OBE (1913-1996) was a Scottish mountaineer and writer, one of an active group of climbers, mainly from Clydeside, before and just after the Second World War.  Much of Murray’s most influential climbing was done with J.H.B. Bell.  This classic work by Bill Murray was probably the first to devote significant space to winter climbing in Scotland as an end in itself, rather than just as training for the Alps.  The volume covers first and early ascents of classic climbs on Ben Nevis, Lochnagar and The Cioch, amongst many others.  Unusually, the manuscript for this book was written by Murray while in a prisoner-of-war camp in Czechoslovakia, seized by the Gestapo and not returned, and then re-written by Murray later at a second prison camp.  Murray was deputy leader to Eric Shipton on the 1951 Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition but did not acclimatise well and was not included in the successful 1953 Expedition.  Amongst his other well-known books are Undiscovered Scotland (1951), The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951), The Story of Everest (1953) and, with J.E.B. Wright, The Craft of Climbing (1964).