Tag: George Mallory

What if …?

Posted on by Julie Summers

Often it is useless to ask: ‘what if’?’ but I thought I’d indulge in a little speculation as Jochen Hemmleb’s and my book The Everest Mystery is launched in the United States and Canada. Working with Jochen has been a fantastic collaboration and it has left us both with residual curiosity about the fate of Sandy Irvine and George Mallory. For Jochen there are still unanswered questions about the final climb. For me there is an appetite to delve deeper into our research about Sandy’s life and personality and to ask that question: what if he had returned from Everest?

With my knowledge of our family history and with the few hints he dropped in the last year of his life I feel I have some understanding of who he was and what he might have become. Had he returned in 1924 he would have arrived in Britain in August, six weeks before the start of the autumn term at Oxford. If he and Mallory had succeeded in reaching the summit of Everest, they would have become national heroes, and Mallory’s life would have changed out of all recognition. His dream fulfilled, he would have had the fame to make a career out of his success and to give Ruth, his wife, the life she and the children deserved. Sandy, too, would have found fame but it would have been limited by his age and his need to complete his education. The idea of a professional climber or explorer lay years in the future and sponsorship for a lifestyle was not invented until the seventies. Had they not succeeded but nevertheless held the altitude record for this highest climb on Mount Everest to date, that would still have had some impact on their standing.

So either way, summit or not in his bag, Sandy would have come back to Britain and spent most of the summer with his family in Birkenhead or in the Lake District. In October he would have caught the train to Oxford for his final year studying Chemistry at Merton College. His friends would have welcomed him back into the Boat Race squad and he would have been in the running to become president of the all-important Oxford University Boat Club. The crew raced again in 1925 and sank. The weather was atrocious and their boat became waterlogged. Cambridge clocked up yet another victory. I don’t believe Sandy’s presence in the boat or his leadership of the club could have overturned that result, but he would have given it his best.

Sandy Irvine in his rowing scarf, 1923 The Warden & Fellows of Merton College, Oxford

Life after Oxford was always going to be a challenge for Sandy. His love affair with Marjorie was still a live issue. Harry Summers had made it clear he would have to cite Sandy in the divorce proceedings against his wife and that disgrace would have hung heavy over the then twenty-three-year-old. My best guess is that he would have been gently encouraged to leave the country until things died down, not least to avoid bringing embarrassment on his sister, Evelyn, who was about to marry Dick Summers, Harry’s youngest son. So a career abroad might have been an option. George Binney, who had led the Spitsbergen expedition in 1923 and was a friend and fellow Mertonian went to work for the Hudson Bay Company. Sandy might well have found an opening there and with his Everest fame in his pocket he would have been welcomed.

Sandy with Marjorie (right) at Harry Summers’s home, Newbold. Far left is Sandy’s sister, Evelyn, and next to her, Maud Summers, Harry’s daughter and Marjorie’s stepdaughter, April 1923. The Warden and Fellows, Merton College, Oxford

The magnificent landscapes and mountains of Canada and North America would have been a playground for our adventurous spirit. He left us a clue about this in his letter to Arnold Lunn from January 1924 when he wrote: ‘When I am an old man I will look back on Christmas, 1923, as the day when to all intents and purposes I was born. I don’t think anyone has lived until they have been on ski.’ I think that, more than anything else, gives us the clue into his passion for adventure but, and this is important, not necessarily mountaineering. Skiing in North America would have offered him a marvellous opportunity to get into the sport but also to do some proper winter exploration in the back country. Had he been invited to join an expedition to Everest in the late 1920s I suspect he would have accepted. By 1933, when the next British expedition launched, I believe his interests would have moved on elsewhere. He was not a man to look back over his shoulder. It’s just a hunch and Jochen agrees with me.

Sandy (right) with nine-year-old Peter Lunn, Murren, Switzerland, January 1924. Peter went on to be an Olympic skier and tested skis for various companies into his nineties. Lunn Family

Of one thing I am confident, Sandy Irvine would have gone on finding engineering solutions to any number of problems. I hope it would have taken him towards a life of invention and investigation because his problem-solving brilliance would have been hugely valuable during the Second World War. I’m fairly sure he would have wanted to come back to Britain to ‘do his bit’ as the expression goes. Harry Summers died in 1940 and it was sixteen years since the scandalous divorce so that would not have been an impediment.

Sandy’s radical redesign of the oxygen apparatus for the 1924 expedition. The Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford

Would Sandy have married? Unlikely but possible. I suspect if he did marry it would not have been to Audrey Pym, his adolescent sweetheart. His life would have led him out of her orbit as he set off west. He would definitely have been the most popular uncle in the Irvine family and one whose stories, told in his quiet manner but accompanied by his twinkling eyes and ready smile, would have enchanted children for many years. After all, his life has done that although it was cut short at twenty-two. Just imagine how many more tales we would have had to enjoy had he lived to become an old man.

This piece of fabric was sent back to Sandy’s sister, Evelyn, in 1931. In it were 31 garnets collected by Sandy’s sherpa from 1924. The Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford

So while our book is finding its feet on bookshelves in shops, and hopefully homes too, we would like you to imagine that you can get to know Sandy Irvine and perhaps have your own ideas about what might have been had he made it home safely in 1924.

When Worlds Collide

Posted on by Julie Summers

For the first six months of 2024, I was busy and taken up with two projects. The first was the centenary celebration of the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine on Mount Everest on 8 June 1924. The second was the completion of my biography of British Vogue which was in the final stages of proofs, and we were looking to pin down the pictures. It was a delightful juxtaposition. I enjoyed flitting between exquisite photoshoots by Nick Knight and Mario Testino in Vogue and the chilly black, white and blue world of the high Himalaya. While the book proofs were being tweaked and the index completed, I took part in several events to mark the Everest 100th anniversary. The first was at Shrewsbury School in February, the day the expedition set off from Liverpool on 29 February 1924. Then a seminar day on 26 April at Merton College, Oxford (Sandy Irvine’s college) on the day he got his first sighting of the mountain from Pang La Pass 100 years ago.

Sandy Irvine 1923 The Warden & Fellows of Merton College, Oxford

And finally the major celebration at the Royal Geographical Society in London, organised by Rebecca Stephens and the Himalayan Trust. This took place on 8 June, the exact date the two climbers were last seen by Captain Noel Odell ‘going strong for the top.’ It was an extraordinary and moving event and we all felt that the centenary of the greatest mountaineering mystery of all time had been well and truly put to bed. I even announced my intention to retire from Everest-related matters.

And so I returned to the rarified air of high fashion and Vogue history. Over the summer I finalised the selection of images for the plates section, saw the final proofs off to the setters and then, as readers of this blog will know, I was fortunate enough to see the book coming off the presses on 3 September. After a short but lovely walking holiday in Greece, I returned to a frenzy of pre-publication activity for the Vogue biography. There was a glitzy launch at Iconic Images Gallery in London and a Q&A with former Vogue editor, Alexandra Shulman at the V&A at which we discussed Vogue, clothes and other things that matter.

One of the issues we talked about was how all of us make fashion choices every day, even if we think we are not interested in fashion. We make a decision about whether it’s a jeans or dress day, whether it’s warm enough to wear shorts or a skirt without tights, whether we’re trying to dress to impress or simply to wear clothes appropriate for the task in hand. Our clothes tell others so much about who we are, what we are doing, and in the case of history, to what time period we belong. Audrey Withers, Vogue’s editor in the 1940s and 1950s, said she could date a dress to a season and tell you what was going on at the time politically and economically.

Imagine my surprise when I received a call one morning the following week from a high-altitude filmmaker in Kathmandu who wanted to talk about an old boot he had found in a glacier on Everest a few days earlier. The boot was leather with nails (for grip), meaning it had been used for climbing. There was a thick woollen sock poking out from the boot – brown and cream (café au lait?) which meant the wearer had been clear that he or she wanted to keep their feet warm at altitude. Actually, I knew it was a ‘he’ because no women were on Everest in the era of nailed leather boots. It matched in type, design and weight, the boot found on George Mallory’s body in 1999. Could it possibly be a boot belonging to Sandy Irvine? If so, that would blow all the most recent theories of the Chinese removing Irvine’s body from the mountain to smithereens. How could we possibly prove it? Simple, as it turns out. Stitched perfectly onto the sock was a Cash’s name tape: A. C. IRVINE.

This incredible find, made by climber/filmmaker Jimmy Chin when he was on his way down from the upper mountain, has opened up the whole mystery of Mallory and Irvine for the second time. And in the centenary year, a quarter of a century after Mallory’s body was found by Chin’s friend and mentor, Conrad Anker, in May 1999. The fact that Chin found only a boot and sock (with the foot too) is tantalising and begs the question as to what happened and where is the rest of Sandy Irvine’s body. I have studied the mystery of Mallory and Irvine for nearly 30 years, and I have spoken to many climbers, filmmakers, mountaineering historians, glaciologists and artists. I know that objects caught in glaciers are moved, crushed and spat out by the slow-moving rivers of ice. Andy Parkin, an artist in Chamonix, specialises in sculptures created from found and recycled objects, often crushed and changed by the Mont Blanc glacier. I knew from conversations with him how things can reappear years after they fell into the ice.

Mallory replica clothing recreated by Mike Parsons & Mary Rose from fragments found on his body in 1999 (Mountain Heritage Trust)

Those who know the story of Mallory and Irvine well are aware of the sighting of ‘an English Dead’ by a Chinese climber in the 1970s. The body, as he described it to a Japanese climber a decade later, was sitting upright, as if asleep, and was wearing old fashioned clothing, puttees and red braces. Mountaineering historians Audrey Salkeld and Thomas Holzel concluded this could only be Sandy Irvine. They set off to find out if that was indeed the case, but their search was not successful. When Eric Simonson’s Anglo-American expedition set off in 1999 to search for Irvine’s body they contacted my father, Peter, and asked for a DNA sample so they could identify the remains if they found them. In the event, the climbers stumbled upon the remains of George Mallory. Photographs of his frozen body ricocheted around the globe and a whole new generation of Everest enthusiasts became hooked on the story.

One of those I spoke to frequently was Graham Hoyland, who was key to the 1999 expedition and is a relative of another member of the 1924 Everest team, Howard Somervell. In 2011 we were discussing yet another expedition planning to try to find Irvine’s body and he said: ‘I think it’s unlikely that they will find anything. There has been a lot of avalanche activity and probably landslides in the region of old camp VI. I reckon your great uncle will have been sluffed off the mountain and into the glacier.’ I distinctly recall that word sluffed. Since then, other expeditions have tried to find Sandy Irvine’s remains and all have failed. One recent expedition leader, Mark Synott, has gone on record to allege that the Chinese had taken Sandy Irvine’s body off the mountain. In the Daily Mail in April 2024 he is quoted: ‘We now have multiple sources all essentially saying the same thing: the Chinese found Irvine, removed the body, and are jealously guarding this information from the rest of the world – all to protect the claim that the 1960 Chinese team was the first to reach the summit…’

Well, that’s one theory that is well and truly put to bed now. Sandy Irvine’s body was never removed from Everest. That the boot is his, there is no doubt, thanks to the name label on the sock. And just for fun, the invoices for both the boot and the lambswool socks are in the archive of Merton College, Oxford. There is even a photograph of Sandy drying his socks at Shekar Dzong in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society. Sometimes history comes together beautifully, like a perfectly knitted woollen. And it turns out that clothes do matter.

These two images courtesy Sandy Irvine Archive, The Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford

Mallory & Irvine 1924-2024: commemorating the greatest mountaineering mystery of all time

Posted on by Julie Summers
Mallory & Irvine leaving Camp IV on 6 June 1924, taken by Noel Odell (C)Royal Geographical Society

On Saturday 8 June 2024 over 600 people gathered at the Royal Geographical Society in London to mark the 100th anniversary of the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. Among the crowd were more than 30 members of the Mallory family, 8 Irvines and a good showing of Odells, Nortons, Somervells and Morshead (from the 1922 expedition). It was a great event and one charged with more emotion than I had expected.

It all started with a reception for the family members where at least sixty of us gathered in the entrance hall. It was fun to renew friendships and meet other expedition party relatives. It is not often you can walk up to someone and ask boldly ‘so, who are you?’ and get a friendly response of ‘I’m a Norton/Somervell/Odell.’ Meantime a film made by the Alpine Club, Everest Revisited 1924-2024, which looks at the 1920s Everest expeditions, was premiered in the lecture theatre. It focuses on all the participants, including the sherpa and porters, as well as the two well-known protagonists. It offers a fascinating mixture of archive footage, interviews including Chris Bonington, Stephen Venables, Dawson Stellfox, and Leo Houlding in Mallory replica clothing, and thought-provoking commentary from Ed Douglas comparing the 1920s expeditions with today.

Leo Houlding, Graham Hoyland and I each gave a short illustrated talk to shed light on various aspects of the 1924 expedition. Leo talked about making the IMAX film The Wildest Dream on Everest in 2007. He remembered Conrad Anker calling him out of the blue in 2006 and asking him how he would like to play Sandy Irvine. ‘The easiest decision of my life’, he told us. Filming is a lengthy process and no more so than for IMAX which requires huge cameras, batteries and other gear, and a lot of hanging around as shots are set up. Tedious at the best of times but dangerous on Everest. Seeing the footage of him hugging his toes in a tent after standing out in the snow and wind at some bewilderingly high altitude brought home the intensity of the cold on the mountain. His description of climbing the second step without the use of the Chinese ladder was particularly fascinating to the eager experts in the audience. He summited late in the season – on 14 June 2007 – so the IMAX team could be assured of an empty summit.

Leo Houlding warming his toes with all his might (C)Leo Houlding

Graham led us into the story of his relative, Howard Somervell, who famously gave George Mallory his Kodak Vestpocket camera as he prepared to leave Camp IV with Sandy Irvine for the final summit bid. The question of whether, if the camera is ever found, there will be a film to be developed has continued to fascinate Graham – and tens of thousands of others. What he also brought to our attention were Somervell’s notes on barometric pressure on Everest which proved that the pressure was as low on 8/9 June 1924 as it was during the great storm of 1996 that killed so many climbers. Both Leo and Graham believe it is unlikely the two climbers made it to the summit, though not impossible.

I took the audience back to Sandy’s childhood so that they could get some sort of picture of the man who has always stood in Mallory’s shadow. When he wrote to his wife, Ruth, from the voyage to India, Mallory said of Sandy Irvine ‘he’ll be one to rely on for everything except, perhaps, conversation.’ This phrase has been quoted over the last 100 years to condemn poor Sandy Irvine as a slightly thick if very able sportsman. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I had fun talking about his wild childhood adventures, his engineering genius evident even at school and his great rowing prowess. I didn’t dwell on his love affairs as they have been well-covered, but believe me, he was active on all fronts.

A meeting to decide who would be invited to the 1924 expedition (C)Alpine Club

After the break Dr Wade Davis zoomed in from Vancouver to give us the most extraordinary and moving talk about the Everest team members from all 3 expeditions of the 1920s. All but a handful had been involved in the First World War. He talked movingly about how Dr Arthur Wakefield (doctor in 1922) had lost his faith after witnessing only 37 survivors of the more than 800 men from his regiment from Canada who were slaughtered on the first day of the Battle of the Somme; how Howard Somervell, on duty as a young surgeon that day, saw six acres of injured and dying men; how Colonel Edward Norton took part in almost every campaign in the War. It was a tour de force and at times it was almost too painful to contemplate what those men had witnessed. Wade is brilliant and he was able to offer light relief when discussing how the expedition members were chosen. George Finch was an Australian with a very colourful married life who was left out of 1921 on account of being off his food, tired and having lost weight (he was in the middle of a second, untidy divorce). He was allowed to go in 1922 and performed well but was dropped in 1924 with no reasonable explanation. Though this did leave a gap which was filled by Sandy Irvine. What came out of this talk was the humanity and bravery of the expedition members, but also the sadness of the loss of Mallory and Irvine. He quoted Edward Norton’s remarks at Base Camp in the aftermath: ‘We were a sad little party. We accepted the loss in that rational spirit which all of our generation had learnt in the Great War … but the tragedy was very near: our friends’ vacant tents and vacant places at table were a constant reminder to us.’

Norton wrote a letter to Sandy’s parents after their deaths, and I thought it would be fitting to quote from it at some length. I still find it moving today:

“Much that your son was to us I have already written of in various communiqués to the Times – From the word go he was a complete & absolute success in every way.  He was spoken of by General Bruce in an early communiqué as our ‘experiment’ – I can assure you that his experimental stage was a short one as he almost at once became almost indispensable – It was not only that we leant on him for every conceivable mechanical requirement – it was more that we found we could trust his capacity, ingenuity & astonishingly ready good nature to be equal to any call.  One of the wonderful things about him was how, though nearly 20 years younger than some of us, he took his place automatically without a hint of the gaucherie of youth, from the very start, as one of the most popular members of our mess. 

The really trying times that we had throughout May at Camp III & the week he put in at Camp IV were the real test of his true metal – for such times inevitably betray a man’s weak points – & he proved conclusively & at once that he was good all through – I can hardly bear to think of him now as I last saw him (I was snowblind the following morning & never really saw him again) on the North Col – looking after us on our return from our climb – cooking for us, waiting on us, washing up the dishes, undoing our boots, paddling about in the snow, panting for breath (like the rest of us) & this at the end of a week of such work all performed with the most perfect good nature & cheerfulness.

Physically of course he was splendid – as strong as a horse – I saw him two or three times carry for some faltering porter heavier loads than any European has ever carried here before. He did the quickest time ever done between some of the stages up the glacier – one of his feats was to haul, with Somervell, a dozen or so porters loads up 150 feet of ice cliff on the way to the N. Col. As for his capacity as a mountaineer the fact that he was selected by Mallory to accompany him in the last & final attempt on the mountain speaks for itself.” As Norton himself said to Geoffrey Bruce when discussing Sandy Irvine, ‘men have had worse epitaphs.’

As we were marking the centenary in London, other commemorations were taking place around the country. In Birkenhead Dr Philip Walton put a candle in the window of 56 Park Road South, as Sandy’s mother had done in Wales when he disappeared. A light to show him the way home.

A candle in the window of 56 Park Road South

At Chester Cathedral’s evensong the choir and congregation processed to the stained-glass window in the cathedral’s cloisters dedicated to Mallory & Irvine. There they sang Psalm 121 and said prayers ‘in remembrance of their journey’.

Window in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral

Merton College flew the college flag at half-mast – a rare honour  – and someone had laid flowers at the Irvine memorial in the college gardens. I had unveiled a blue plaque to Sandy Irvine on the wall of 56 Park Road South on Friday and the mayor of Birkenhead did the same for Mallory at 34 Slatey Road. It is extraordinary how this story of the disappearance of two men a century ago still touches people and moves them.

Merton College, Oxford, 8 June 2024

It has been a great journey and a huge joy to be involved in a quarter of a century of the Mallory and Irvine story. Now I am going to hand over to the next generation. I have loved getting to know great men and women from the world of mountaineering, including the wonderful Rebecca Stephens who led the event on Saturday on behalf of the Himalayan Trust. I am proud to call her a friend.

What can I say but thank you?

For anyone interested, there are exhibitions about Sandy Irvine and George Mallory at the following venues:

Merton College Oxford – see www.merton.ox.ac.uk for details

Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre https://birkenhead-park.org.uk/events/sandy-irvine-from-birkenhead-to-everest/

The Alpine Club, http://www.alpine-club.org.uk/events/past-future-exhibitions/1276-everest-1924