Product Description
Individually the three volumes of Chris Bonington's autobiography are collector's items. Here they are brought together in a value-for-money omnibus. I Chose to Climb, was published in 1966 and told of his initiation into mountaineering, from schoolboy beginnings, culminating in the British ascent of the North Face of the Eiger and his decision to turn professional. The Next Horizon picks up where that volume left off and relates his subsequent adventures as a mountaineer, photographer, journalist and expedition leader ending in the summer of 1972 with preparations for the autumn Everest expedition. In the event this expedition only just failed to put a British climber on top of the world's highest mountain for the first time. The last volume The Everest Years chronicles his four expeditions to the world's highest peak and Bonington's obsession with this particular mountain. In all three books we learn about the charismatic generation of climbing personalities who were his friends, with whom he shared his triumphs and fights for survival on dangerous and sometimes tragic expeditions. We learn too of Chris Bonington's development into the devoted family man and celebrity he is today.

Synopsis
Individually the three volumes of Chris Bonington's autobiography are collector's items. Here they are brought together in a value-for-money omnibus. I Chose to Climb, was published in 1966 and told of his initiation into mountaineering, from schoolboy beginnings, culminating in the British ascent of the North Face of the Eiger and his decision to turn professional. The Next Horizon picks up where that volume left off and relates his subsequent adventures as a mountaineer, photographer, journalist and expedition leader ending in the summer of 1972 with preparations for the autumn Everest expedition. In the event this expedition only just failed to put a British climber on top of the world's highest mountain for the first time. The last volume The Everest Years chronicles his four expeditions to the world's highest peak and Bonington's obsession with this particular mountain. In all three books we learn about the charismatic generation of climbing personalities who were his friends, with whom he shared his triumphs and fights for survival on dangerous and sometimes tragic expeditions.

We learn too of Chris Bonington's development into the devoted family man and celebrity he is today.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews   4 of 4 people found the following review helpful: Poetry, discipline, emotion - a privilege and a lesson, 23 Aug 2000 By A Customer ...This is a bumper volume of 3 books and I'll leave it to the experts to discuss the technical side. What left a lasting impression on me - and I make a point of reading my now probably valuable 1st edn Boningtons before any stiff climb around Baker or Rainier - was his huge felicity with words while at the same time preserving a gentlemanly diffidence; his willingness to bare his soul in a way that tapped universal truths. Mountaineering types will read assessments of this collection in their favoured climbing press, but what I urge is that *non* climbers give this a look-see. In one collection, you're in the hands of an athlete and a soldier and one who can write. Carton de Wiart was the last bloke who gave me this feeling. We see Bonington - and please, when will editors finally wake up to his spelling? - grow thru early ebullience to what I suppose I might recognise as maturity if I ever make it there myself. Either way, it works and it stops you in your tracks to think. Nor is Bonington is not shy to show his emotions. We've all had excruciating battles with indecision or those appalling times when we were helpless in the face of loved ones' deaths. Bonington just hacks it onto the page and even as the tears run, you thank him for finallh nailing it so well. What with ghastly Americanism one might call "closure". The mountains are just a setting for this very human tale and any loner who's tried to make some sense of this world will translate the peaks into whatever battleground they themselves chose. Here's a bloke who chucked a decent payslip from The Man to pit himself against the peaks. More than that - and here's where you'd never have got Haston or Whillans to dissect it with such skill - Bonington describes the commercial side of having to fawn and whip up cash from the drippiest types to finance an expedition, only to see the moolah drain before the first sherpas have even started their steady jog up from Base Camp. 'The Everest Years' is a real bonus here: as with this omnibus, I'd been sent it for review yonks ago but I clearly had other things on my mind because I don't at all remember the expert rhythm or the poetry of this autumnal Bonington. The canvas is wider - vertiginous Changabang, Ogre where CB bust himself up something awful - but the writing trancends the mountain (Pseuds Corner, here I come) and seems to spell out universal