Among mountaineering books, there are some that are fun – but only a select handful that are actually funny, says Ronald Turnbull. This send-up of Scottish hill-going captures the 1970s, a time when the era of genteel gents with beards and nailed boots was giving way to a less stuffy age.
On the one occasion I saw him, he did indeed come across as a very nice man. As his photograph suggests, he was wry, ironic, witty, with a fine sense of the ridiculous.
trivial point but he was a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh rather than a Royal Academy of Edinburgh (don't think the 2nd exists but may be wrong).
I used to look forward to them appearing in SMC journal year by year before they were published as a collection but wonder if today's younger climbers still find them as entertaining ?
A segment in tonight's episode of Channel 4's investigative series Dispatches exposes the sale of uncertified budget climbing gear online - carabiners in particular - via the shopping platform Temu, a Chinese app with...