Literature Mountain Literature Classics: Scrambles Amongst the Alps by Edward Whymper
The engravings may be better than the writing, but with its blend of triumph and tragedy, the story of Whymper's five-year campaign for the first ascent of the Matterhorn is one of mountain climbing's defining narratives, says Ronald Turnbull.
Comments
Both instructive and entertaining. Thanks.
Simon Armitage is a northern lad and his translation reads well to someone similarly from the north of England.
Thanks, a really enjoyable and evocative piece. That patch of land around Back Forest and Gradbach Hill is pretty much my favourite bit of the Peak District, and perhaps a little bit of that is because of the associations with this great poem (made so much more accessible by the Simon Armitage translation). Walking through those woods and moors on a dark and misty November day brings some of those lines to life.
Probably a Staffordshire accent rather than Derbyshire.
A few years ago the author Alan Garner wrote about this poem in The Times and described its setting in the modern landscape. He tells how he read it to his father, who spoke the old Staffordshire dialect and had far less trouble understanding the language of the poem than Garner's tutors at Oxford.
Great fun...thanks.