Boundless Horizons (Hardcover)

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 truths, which is why I shall be buying this up as Xmas presents for my closest climbing buds and urging it on anyone else with a pulse and an eye for the well turned phrase. Only the Good Lord knows why He chose Chris to survive when he gathered so many others- infant and adult, climber, kin - perhaps to place with us these incomparable records as a bridge between those who need to feed the rat and the hugely more courageous ones we leave behind..Give it a go: seek it out in your local bookshop or library and just savour the style and glimpse the man. He doesn't just climb them: Bonington rocks.

However, the down side to this tome is the sheer volume and patchy nature; too often it feels like you're not reading a story, you're reading a textbook and trying to absorb everything. This gets very tiring, and in my case the book gets put down - only to be picked up again months later. Eventually, you finish it. If I'd bought this tome as separate books rather than an omnibus, then I think it would have worked much better - finishing each one would have led me to try to remember to buy the next - and the naturally induced breaks might have improved the experience.

In the end, these books are great books, especially if you like real-life tales of adventure, but unwisely bunched into an omnibus. It's not as pacey as say "The White Spider", or even "Solo: The North Pole...", but it's worth persevering for the historical value.