Welcome to my ninth newsletter, posted at the very end, I suspect, of the season of mellow fruitfulness. I can hardly remember a lovelier autumn and certainly the trees in my garden have put on an unrivalled display of beauty.Contents
- Mr Irvine laid to rest (for a while)
- The Warpath Leads to Woodstock
- E.E.K.
- Clowning about
- Pen Thoughts
- Forthcoming Events
Mr Irvine laid to rest (for a while)
Sandy Irvine
My lecture tour “Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine”, organised by Rebecca Varley from Speakers from the Edge finished on 3rd November in Andover. I even got a nice review from Nigel Vardy in Derby. Six weeks on and off the road has been tiring but exhilarating in equal measure. Sandy’s story has certainly engaged those who heard it, and I don’t think for a minute that interest in the 1924 Mount Everest exhibition is diminishing. On the contrary, fascination with it seems as alive as ever. Earlier in the summer I had a small spat with Tom Holzel, an American who believes that he knows where Sandy’s body is lying on Everest; he intends to go and dig him up and find that all-elusive camera that will prove whether or not they got to the top. Proof? What proof? What does it prove if there is no picture of the summit? It could indicate they didn’t make it, yes, but it could also be that the film was damaged, that it was dark on the summit, that Sandy’s hands were too cold, that the camera jammed. It might be possible to prove they did make it, but conclusive proof that they did not make it will never exist. That is unless Sandy sat on the Second Step and wrote on a piece of paper ‘bother, beaten’. Unlikely, I think.
Then there is Somervell’s relative, Graham Hoyland, who wrote to me a while back saying he was sorry to have to tell me that after a lifetime of believing they had got to the summit he had now come to the conclusion they had not. Should his opinion on the greatest mountaineering mystery of all time change my life? I think not. Why should I give credit to any of the conspiracy theories and hair-brained so-called research into this story? I’ve been endlessly polite and patient when people ask me about it, but actually I’m getting fed up. I am constantly asked ‘wouldn’t you like to know if Mallory and Irvine got to the summit?’ The answer is that I don’t really care either way. What they achieved is so remarkable and inspiring that the last few hundred feet do not matter. And, in Hillary’s famous words, you have to descend in order to be able to claim the summit. What was does bother me is people’s determination to find an answer and in doing so to expose Sandy’s frozen, bird-pecked mortal remains to greedy media hungry for sensational images. If he could be accorded the same dignity in death as are those soldiers of the First World War battlefields whose remains are still found in areas where the war was fought, then I would be less uncomfortable but that will not be the case. So my answer is: ‘No, I’d rather he was left alone.’The Warpath Leads to Woodstock
Tank made from Woodbine cigarette packet.
Holley/Cornelius Collection, Bletchley Park
Swiss climber Ueli Steck on the North Wall of the Eiger, 2008, photographed by Robert Boesch ©
(not to be reproduced without permission from the copyright holder)
Objects for the showcases piled up on a table waiting to be given breathing space
A corner of the toys’ showcase with the penguin and the crane living happily side by side
While I’m on the warpath, I want to mention briefly the exhibition I have been working on that opened in Woodstock at the Oxfordshire Museum last month. We succeeded in squeezing a quart into a pint pot without, I hope, giving the sense that the exhibition was overcrowded. It is titled Children and War and it looks at all aspects of war and how that affects children’s lives, both for the worse and the better. There is a lovely online version of the exhibition which you can visit. Cramming boy soldiers, innocent victims of war, commemoration, evacuees, asylum seekers, refugees and toys into a single gallery was a huge challenge but with the help of the very talented Glenn Howard, our designer, it worked. Borrowing works is always a pleasure and a delight for an exhibition organiser and especially so this time when dealing with Mark and Min at the Holley/Cornelius Collection at Bletchley Park. They lent us the bulk of the toys in the exhibition, including a doll’s house that had been commandeered by a father from his daughter to teach his troops house-to-house combat, and a tiny model tank made out of a Woodbine cigarette box. If you are in the vicinity of Woodstock it’s worth popping in. The exhibition is free and suitable for children from the ages of 4 to 104. Corny but true, believe me.E.E.K.
Alongside my other work I am currently Chairman of the Mountain Heritage Trust, which is growing and developing all the time into a serious and exciting project that takes care of Britain’s rich climbing legacy. Everest is always going to be part of this story, which I suppose is why I got roped into joining the Trust seven years ago. This year, however, it is the second E, the Eiger, that will dominate. We are holding our big, annual, fundraising event at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 1st December and our two speakers are going to be Chris Bonington, talking about the history of the North Face, and Swiss climber and super speed merchant, Ueli Steck, who climbed the face in 2008 in 3 hours and 47 minutes. A staggering feat by any stretch of the imagination. There is more about that event on our newly jazzed up website www.mountain-heritage.org which got its overhaul at the hands of Glenn Howard – yes, the name will be familiar to you from Children and War – in July.
And the K? Well, that stands for Kendal. It’s time for the annual mountain-fest of film, literature, extreme talking and drinking which runs for a weekend every November. Always entertaining, usually exhilarating and very often downright funny, it is a weekend not to be missed if you are interested in catching up with what is going on in the great outdoors. It is not just about photographs of people dangling from overhangs by a pair of ice hammers and the toes of one cramponed foot high above an icefall, or films of young, beautiful people slacklining high above Lake Geneva; it’s also about the environment and mountain culture, about historical personalities as well as today’s rock athletes. I recommend it as an invigorating weekend away.
There is another K, namely K2. Doug Scott ran a successful series of lectures last year for his charity Community Action Nepal, entitled First on Everest. This year he is launching First on K2 in Oxford and we anticipate it will be an equally fascinating event. I have to admit that Doug’s energy makes me feel slothful by comparison. He is one of the busiest people I’ve ever met. So if you fancy finding out more about either E or K, then Mountain Heritage’s website for the former and www.mountainfest.co.uk and www.canepal.org.uk for the latter.Clowning about
Several times a week I get unsolicited emails from people, usually but not always in connection with my books. Some are poignant, others are crackpot and just occasionally the odd one is fabulously rewarding. One of the best came from a clown called Leela Bunce who wrote to me a couple of years ago to tell me about a show she was putting together called Waiting for Stanley which focused on a young woman during the Second World War waiting for her husband to return. She had read Stranger in the House and had found many of the stories moving and relevant to her research. Something about her energy and enthusiasm made me want to keep in touch with her and I’m very glad I did. On 16th October 2011 I went to the Greenwich Theatre in London with my friends Andy and Graham, to watch the premiere performance. It was absolutely remarkable: funny, agonisingly sad, shocking and brilliantly evocative. Some of the pieces in the performance (it was more or less all in mime) were breathtaking and I can only recommend you go to see it if it comes to a theatre near you. Leela and the director, Alex Parsonage, are very talented and their clever performance will appeal to anyone from about 8 years old upwards. Check out www.fingerinthepie.com/stanley if you want to find out more.Pen Thoughts
Setting up an exhibition is always a pleasure. After months and sometimes years of planning there is nothing more exciting than seeing the fruits of one’s imagination realised. Although I am not artistic I have a strong visual sense and it is years since I have been surprised by how an exhibition looks once it is up. However, individual showcases or groups of objects still have the power to take my breath away, especially if they have been difficult to bring together in the first place. Moving an object 2 cm to the left or raising it a few millimetres on a Perspex plinth can make all the difference. Objects need to exist in their own space and say ‘hey, look at me, I am the most important.’ The showcase I am most proud of in Children and War in Woodstock is that of the toys. Everything from a wooden wobbly penguin to a large metal crane with wrecking ball hunkers side by side. There are over 20 toys in that case, which is far more than I would ever have dreamed of putting in a Henry Moore showcase for example. I wondered why this was and came to the conclusion that Moore’s sculptures, even the maquettes, demand a lot of breathing space. He created them to be turned over in one’s mind and one’s hands. Their abstract forms are often not easy to read and they demand time. A pop gun or a wooden tank is a familiar object that is easily recognisable and so it tells its story more quickly and simply. It is not that those objects have less value, it is just that they need less introduction. They are part of the story rather than the whole. I still needed to fiddle and ensure that each was shown to its very best effect but the overall is as important as the individual. If you visit the exhibition I hope you will think it works.
Julie Summers
November 2011, Oxford
julie@juilesummers.co.ukForthcoming Events
- 17-20 November 2011
Kendal Mountain FestivalI will be interviewing writers for the Boardman Tasker prize and introducing events throughout the weekend including the Mountain Heritage Trust ‘Antiques Road Show’www.mountainfest.co.uk - 24 November 2011
Aston Scott School will be reliving evacuation day and I will be attending as a guest speaker - 25th November 2011 at the Gateway Education and Arts Centre, Shrewsbury 11:30am
Shrewsbury Book Fest When the Children Came Homewww.shrewsburybookfest.co.uk - 26th November 2011 6pm Wayfarers’ Club lecture in Ambleside
Everest Needs You, Mr Irvine - 29th November History Channel
When the Boys Came Home - 1st December at the Royal Geographical Society, London
Triumph and Tragedy on the EigerI will be introducing Messrs Bonington and Steck at this Mountain Heritage Trust evening.www.thebmc.co.uk/News.aspx?id=3766
Second World War board game owned by Mrs Joan Hale, Oxon.
Norman Andrews (former evacuee), Barbara Southard, who appears on the front of the book with her arms around her little brother and sister, Sheila Shear (also a former evacuee) and Mike Jones, my editor at Simon & Schuster
Bridge over the River KwaiI had an inkling that this was what he had wanted to talk to me about, as he had hinted as much in his earlier emails. I leaned forward too. This was fascinating stuff. A monologue examining the thoughts and feelings Toosey had when he was commanding those camps along the railway. It would explore the story of the Kwai from a completely different angle:the psychological. How thrilling. I sat back. ‘Who is writing the play?’ I asked. John replied. ‘You are’. I nearly spat my drink across the table. I am not often wrong-footed but this one caught me completely unawares. I spluttered and protested and said I couldn’t and so forth. ‘Oh, shut up!’ he said, impatiently, ‘of course you can do it.’ So I am. Doing it, that is. It is a colossal challenge and one I’m going to have to work incredibly hard at as I have never written any drama before. But I have long wanted to. Radio plays have always appealed to me and I have occasionally day-dreamed about finding the perfect subject for a Radio 4 afternoon slot. But it has never been more than just a day-dream.
The real Mont BlancPen Thoughts
Falcon Rowing Club Women’s Eight rowing towards Barnes Bridge (and doing a spot of sightseeing en route) From bow: Ali, Anna, Emma, Caroline, Julie, Claire, Zena, Naomi and Lil (cox)
Ullswater, Cumbria.
Sandy Irvine’s sketch for the redesign of the oxygen apparatus for the 1924 Mount Everest expedition© Merton College, Oxford
l-r: Tim McCartney Snape, Doug Scott, Peter Habeler and Tom Hornbein, climbed Mount Everest in 1984, 1975, 1978 and 1963 respectively.
Richard, Simon, Sandy, Julie on the Isis, 30 December 2010And Finally…
Resin monkey found in a grave at Pheasant Wood,
A bra made out of scout ties in Stanley internment camp
SB and Julie: Simon and Julie racing (and winning) the semi-final of the Elite Mixed Doubles at City of Oxford Regatta in August
Head and Shoulders 1927
Showcase in Remembering Fromelles at the IWM showing coins, leather matches case, pipe and phrase book, all found in the Fromelles area
Henry Moore Deluxe: Books, Prints & Portfolios
Sir Ernest Shackleton charming a group of ladies at a garden party after the Nimrod expedition.
Left to right: Julie, Jude, Lil, ZenaAnd Finally…
men of a Graves Registration Unit in the early
This leather pouch containing a crucifix was one of the personal items found during excavations at Fromelles in 2009
Return ticket from Fremantle to Perth. This really took my breath away, it was so poignant to find something so recognisable and obviously meant to be kept for reuse.At the beginning of March the Joint Identification Board, responsible for pronouncing on the findings of the archaeologists, forensic specialists and DNA experts of the Fromelles project, came up with the names of 75 men who they were able positively to identify. These men died in the Battle of Fromelles on 19th and 20th July 1916 and were buried in a mass grave by the Germans afterwards. Overlooked in the battlefield clearance in the 1920s they were found in 2008 after years of research, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was asked to oversee the task of exhuming the bodies, identifying them where possible and reburying them in a specially constructed new CWGC cemetery a few hundred yards from the place where they had been lying since 1916. My task has been to produce an exhibition and a book (opening & publication 1st July 2010) to mark the project, since it is the first new CWGC cemetery to be built in half a century. So, with the help of experts who worked on the dig, forensic scientists and the team responsible for the new cemetery, we have put together what I hope will be an interesting overview of an extraordinary undertaking.
Archaeologists carefully examine the soil in
This is a clean copy of the phrase book that
Funeral at Fromelles taken by
sculptural group on the Armed Forces Memorial by Ian Rank-Broadley
Left to right:
Signs to cemeteries at Beaumont-Hamel Memorial Park on the Somme. Many of those 650 or so men buried here died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.The audio-CD of The Colonel of Tamarkan, which came out in the late summer, has enjoyed super reviews in the broadsheets. Meanwhile, I finished the draft of the book on war cemeteries for Shire Publications, which should come out some time next summer. It was poignant to be writing that book in the lead up to the first Armistice Day on which there were no more surviving veterans from the Great War. Although the first war cemeteries were built in the nineteenth century, it was really the unparalleled losses of the 1914-18 war that made the work of the then Imperial War Graves Commission both necessary and relevant, and it was the national outpouring of grief during and after that war that shaped our practice of remembrance today. Fittingly, the work I am now engaged upon, which is the publication for the Commission on its new cemetery at Fromelles, leads on from the war cemeteries book. 
Every find discovered at Fromelles is minutely examined. Some are personal, some generic but each is a potential clue to the identity of a man buried here.I have spent the past few weeks in conversation with archaeologists, DNA experts and photographers who have been involved in the recovery of the 250 sets of remains from mass graves dug by the Germans after the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916. There have been some surprising details and moving stories, many of which we will try to weave into the book and Imperial War Museum exhibition for July 2010.
Sandy Irvine, 1923The film focuses mostly on Mallory, the more famous of the two men, but Sandy gets plenty of puff and comes across as a serious athlete, a charismatic young man with energy and character bubbling over in equal measure and as just the man you would want on an expedition to fix your oxygen apparatus. So, an accurate portrayal.
© Atlantic ProductionsA delightful surprise in the film is Leo Houlding, one of Britain’s most talented young climbers, who went to Everest in 2007 to take the part of Sandy in the reconstruction. Leo (left) and Conrad Anker as Mallory were to climb part of the way up the mountain in 1920s kit and, perhaps more importantly, they planned to climb the so-called Second Step, a 60ft rock cliff close to the summit pyramid, which climbers have long argued would have stretched Mallory, and certainly Sandy Irvine, to the limits. Leo, at 26, was just a little older than Sandy. What is compelling about his performance, which seems wholly genuine, is his delight at finding himself part of this remarkable story and about to climb the highest mountain on earth. The resonance between him and Sandy is so strong at times that I found I had to pinch myself.
Leo Houlding (left) and Conrad Anker, dressed in replica 1924 clothing, created after careful study of the clothing.
Marjory SummersSandy Irvine had a brief but indiscreet love affair with Marjory Summers, the very much younger second wife of Harry Summers (my great grandfather). Marjory, who had been a chorus girl when she married Harry at the age of 19, found life married to her stout, balding, fifty-two year old husband quiet. Dull even. So she found her own forms of entertainment in Flintshire, where she and Harry lived from 1917. By the time she threw her hat at Sandy in 1923, when he was twenty-one and she twenty six, she had thrown caution to the winds as far as her marriage was concerned. In a move of the utmost audacity she followed Sandy to Norway when he went with the Merton College Arctic expedition to Spitsbergen in July 1923. This much is already known.
Sandy in Spitsbergen outside his tentI found Sandy’s diary from the expedition in the library at Merton College, Oxford. He wrote that the ladies of the party had travelled in first class berths and that he and the other expedition members had been consigned to steerage. But on the last night that they were on board, before the party divided and the ladies went home, Sandy visited Marjory’s cabin at five o’clock in the morning and made love to her three times before breakfast. The ladies departed that morning and Sandy spent three hours asleep on a box of biscuits in the customs’ shed prior to leaving Tromso for the islands in the Norwegian archipelago.
The Merton College Arctic expedition with ladies. Marjory seated top right next to Sandy in a flat cap smoking his pipe.When I discovered this sensational snippet I rang my father, who immediately said that he thought it inappropriate to publish such detail in my biography of Sandy. Being slightly in awe of my father and certainly respectful of his wishes I desisted and the story did not appear. A decision I have regretted ever since. Until now, that is. Now you all know. But what makes me laugh is that this information was too much for National Geographic as well. They demanded that Atlantic Productions cut the story from the film. Which they did. Bird pecked body parts yes, stories about sexual prowess no. Hmm. Let’s hope Sandy’s story makes it into the British version of the film.
Julie in the 3 seat with Jude and Lil on the Isis,
The original photograph of ‘The Endurance’ brought from Elephant Island to South Georgia by Sir Ernest ShackletonWhat is significant about the photograph, taken by Frank Hurley and developed and printed by him after the ship had gone down, was that Shackleton carried it with him in his pocket when he sailed from Elephant Island to South Georgia to raise the rescue mission for the men left behind. Now here’s the critical thing as far as I am concerned. Frank Hurley took a photograph of a sinking ship. Fine. He developed the glass plate (approximately 12″ x 8”). Where? On the ice. In a tent. Then he made a little print for Shackleton. Not a big one, he couldn’t have fitted a big one into his pocket. Where? Presumably also in a tent on the ice. Moving ice at that. In fact we know that Hurley kept a selection of the photographs he had taken on the voyage, prior to The Endurance being swallowed by the ice, because it is recorded that he and Shackleton had to make the terrible decision to jettison the majority of the glass slides as they were so heavy. Still, Hurley managed, in those extreme circumstances, to keep with him sufficient equipment to photograph, develop and print pictures. And then Shackleton succeeded in making his extraordinary journey in a lifeboat, the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia, some 800 miles across some of the heaviest seas in the world. He carried the photograph with him in order to prove who he was and what had happened to his ship. It is only slightly more remarkable that the photograph still exists and, perhaps, that I managed to find it. Picture research is often underestimated but when we researchers find gems it is thrilling and they should be made the most of.
– now out in paperbackStranger in the House, which was published in September 2008, came out in paperback last month and has recently received two good reviews in the Guardian and Sunday Times. I feel enormously lucky to have met so many remarkable men and women through my research for this book and I am fortunate that most have stayed in touch. Certainly the comments I receive when I give talks about Stranger convince me that it tapped into a previously untouched seam and it is lovely to hear that the stories in the book chime with people’s own experiences and bring back memories. I always felt with Stranger that it was a joint effort so renewed thanks and respect to all who contributed.Worlds Out Loud
Phil Toosey in his study at Heathcote in the early 1970s at a time when he was recording his memoirs© Toosey Family CollectionMy grandfather died in 1975 so I never heard him speak of it but Anton brings colour and empathy to his experiences in a way that I had hardly dared to hope. Hearing the story come alive through Anton’s reading is one of the most exciting experiences I can recall. He succeeds in capturing Toosey’s humour, his mental toughness, his honesty but also his despair, when the camps were bombed by the RAF in 1944.
Anton LesserAfter his sandwich he went back into the recording studio and I returned to Oxford to watch the final race in the bumps. Catriona, at Chrome, told me that when Anton read the last chapter she could not follow the script as her eyes were brimming with tears.
Moreton-in-Marsh New Cemetery, GloucestershireOn the writing front I am being kept busy with a little book for Shire Publications on Commonwealth war cemeteries and a bigger book for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission about their new cemetery at Fromelles in France, which has been much in the news. The cemetery is being built to take the remains of upwards of 250 Australian and British soldiers who died in the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916 and who were buried by the Germans in a mass grave, which was discovered by an Australian amateur historian after years of research. DNA tests are currently underway and they hope to identify up to 10% of the soldiers buried in the mass grave. 
Artefacts from the mass grave at FromellesThe book will commemorate the building of the first new CWGC war cemetery in half a century and there will be an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum from July 2010 in which we will be showing some of the artefacts that have been found in the mass grave, including a return train ticket from Fremantle to Perth, a leather purse with coins and a heart shaped leather pouch containing a solid gold cross. If you are at all interested in the Fromelles story then the CWGC website has excellent information, daily blogs, a photo gallery and much more. Follow www.cwgc.org/fromelles.
Returning evacueesI am also working on another book for Simon & Schuster, this time about evacuee children and how their returns home affected their lives. So many books and films look at what happened when the children went away but little is known about what happened once they came back . The stories and experiences are as varied as you can imagine – some funny, some heartening and some, inevitably, tragic. I am over halfway through the research and will start writing in January.Pen Thoughts