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'The fulfilment of life's purpose will be found in oneness with reality.' This declaration is an extract from a letter to his sister written by the mountaineer W H Murray while in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany following capture by Rommel's army in North Africa. In this posthumously published autobiography (he died in 1996) Murray recounts how meditation and the study of mysticism enabled him and others to endure three years of incarceration in various camps in Europe and survive the concomitant squalor, vermin, disease, clubbings by guards and lack of food - prisoners would even slaughter and eat Alsatian guard-dogs if they were foolish enough to stray too far from their German masters. But books, when acquired and permitted, were most highly prized by most prisoners, who would give each other lectures in selected subjects, and Murray writes that during his last year of captivity he no longer felt like a prisoner. He even managed to write a manuscript of his own - on scraps of toilet paper which he stuffed into his clothes - and when his first draft was found and confiscated by suspicious Gestapo officers he wrote it all over again. On his release Murray again devoted himself to his life's passion of mountaineering, and he concentrates the rest of his autobiography on his several climbs in the Himalayas, with detailed descriptions of physical hardships and dangers interspersed with wisdom gleaned not only from books but from fellow mountaineers. The relish of a challenge, allied to the sheer sense of triumphant exhilaration experienced through scaling seemingly impossible peaks, shines throughout his writing. This superb book stands as a testament to a life of internal examination coupled with external exploration, and to a brave, adventurous and resilient man with an indomitably positive outlook. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
Pioneering climbing in Scotland the 1930s, combat against Rommel's forces, three years in Nazi prison camps, and a near fatal alpine accident marked W.H.Murray's early life. Three exploratory Himalayan ventures followed including the critical 1951 reconnaissance trip that established the route by which Everest was climbed two years later. Thereafter he built a reputation as a writer and environmental polemicist and was deeply involved with the struggle to protect the Highlands from commercial exploitation.
'The fulfilment of life's purpose will be found in oneness with reality.' This declaration is an extract from a letter to his sister written by the mountaineer W H Murray while in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany following capture by Rommel's army in North Africa. In this posthumously published autobiography (he died in 1996) Murray recounts how meditation and the study of mysticism enabled him and others to endure three years of incarceration in various camps in Europe and survive the concomitant squalor, vermin, disease, clubbings by guards and lack of food - prisoners would even slaughter and eat Alsatian guard-dogs if they were foolish enough to stray too far from their German masters. But books, when acquired and permitted, were most highly prized by most prisoners, who would give each other lectures in selected subjects, and Murray writes that during his last year of captivity he no longer felt like a prisoner. He even managed to write a manuscript of his own - on scraps of toilet paper which he stuffed into his clothes - and when his first draft was found and confiscated by suspicious Gestapo officers he wrote it all over again. On his release Murray again devoted himself to his life's passion of mountaineering, and he concentrates the rest of his autobiography on his several climbs in the Himalayas, with detailed descriptions of physical hardships and dangers interspersed with wisdom gleaned not only from books but from fellow mountaineers. The relish of a challenge, allied to the sheer sense of triumphant exhilaration experienced through scaling seemingly impossible peaks, shines throughout his writing. This superb book stands as a testament to a life of internal examination coupled with external exploration, and to a brave, adventurous and resilient man with an indomitably positive outlook. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
Pioneering climbing in Scotland the 1930s, combat against Rommel's forces, three years in Nazi prison camps, and a near fatal alpine accident marked W.H.Murray's early life. Three exploratory Himalayan ventures followed including the critical 1951 reconnaissance trip that established the route by which Everest was climbed two years later. Thereafter he built a reputation as a writer and environmental polemicist and was deeply involved with the struggle to protect the Highlands from commercial exploitation.
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