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For English read British which is not to quibble with the title but, as Jim Ring himself explains, 'During the period on which this book focuses, it was the custom - in the words of a Scot - ''to let the part - the larger part - speak for the whole.'' Those countries which received them - France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and above all Switzerland - all talked of the English, and the presence of the English in the Alps was precisely so described. To use the term British would thus have been an anachronism.'
The nineteenth century will forever be associated with the growth of the British Empire, but nearer home there was a quieter conquest taking place. Gradually the English were taking over the Alps, scaling their peaks, driving railways through them, and introducing both winter sports and those quintessential English institutions - tea, baths, lawn tennis and churches - to remote mountain villages.
Jim Ring tells the remarkable story of the English love affair with the Alps, from its beginnings with the Romantic movement, when poets such as Byron and Shelly wrote of the mountains with awed delight, through the great days of the 1850s and 1860s and the formation of the Alpine Club, to the inter-war years when the English assured the future prosperity of the alpine resorts by virtually inventing and then popularizing downhill-skiing.
Part history, part biography, How the English made the Alps brings the characters - the artists, the scientists, the gentleman-adventurers, the invalids, the aristocrats, eccentrics and mountain-scramblers - vividly to life.
'Jim Rings's book cannot be bettered.' Daily Mail
'Fascinating' Stephen Venables, Daily Telegraph
'Evocative and entertaining' Financial Times
'A comprehensive, well-written account of a fascinating subject' Guardian
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Ring has clearly done pretty exhaustive research into the topic, particularly on the conquests of various mountain peaks. He conveys the initial scientific endeavour that spurred climbers on, and also manages to communicate the eccentricity of pursuing alpine "conquest" once the scientific rationale had disappeared.
Given the title, there is a strong Anglo-bias to the writing which perhaps underplays some of the contributions from other countries - foreign climbers are seen generally in the light of competitors and foils for English advances. Again, with the constraints of the title, there is little of the early history of the region in the volume. These are minor quibbles, however, in what is overall a very good account. It is a shame that Fleming's "Killing Dragons" was published so close to this - you wait years for a decent account of the development of the Alps, and then two come along at once. There is enough difference between the two, however, that readers will benefit from reading both.
It may irritate continental Europeans because it is very English centric but the impression is that the English (or should Jim Ring have used the word British?) were a huge force in the change that came about in the Alps in the 19th and 20th centuries, because they were the ones who had the money to spend.
For me the main faults are that it is mainly about mountaineering and that it does not follow through about the English contribution to such resorts such as Méribel and Val d'Isere, which owe an awful lot to the English gentlemen skier and would give the book a link to modern British visitors to the Alps who rarely, I think it would be true to say, climb the Matterhorn!
Any body who has an interest in the Alps should read this book.
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