Quest for Adventure is a collection of stories written by Sir Chris Bonington looking at the adventurous impulse which has driven men and women to achieve the impossible in the face of Earth's elements: crossing its oceans, deserts and poles; canoeing its rivers; climbing its mountains, and descending into its caves.Bonington selects seventeen of the most thrilling expeditions and adventures of the second half of the twentieth century, uncovering the common thread that drives men and women to achieve the impossible. Following a new preface, he charts such outstanding achievements as the Kon-Tiki voyage; Francis Chichester's round-the-world tour in his boat Gipsy Moth IV; the race for the first non-stop circumnavigation of the globe under sail; and Ice Bird's sail around Antarctica.Away from the ocean, the travels of one of the world's most outstanding desert explorers, Wilfred Thesiger, are detailed, journeying through what is menacingly called the Empty Quarter. Bonington returns to familiar ground as he writes about some exceptional mountain adventures, including the 1970 ascent of the South Face of Annapurna, the first ascent of Everest, Reinhold and Gunther Messner on Nanga Parbat, Andy Cave's triumph and tragedy on Changabang, and the first ascent of The Nose of El Capitan in Yosemite. Wally Herbert's team crossing of the Arctic Ocean and the equally gruelling Fuchs/Hillary crossing of Antarctica are written about in detail.More recent adventures include two remarkable flights: the circumnavigation of the globe by balloon and microlight. Quest for Adventure concludes with an account of the cave diving epic the Dead Man's Handshake, leaving the reader with a chill in their spine and an appreciation for the natural wonders below the Earth's surface.Bonington's eloquent writing on a subject in which he is a passionate authority makes for a highly engrossing read for adventurers and armchair explorers alike.

Quest for Adventure: Remarkable Feats of Exploration and Adventure 1950-2000

Bonington, Sir Chris

Biographies & Memoirs

Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated

In 1970, Chris Bonington and his now-legendary team of mountaineers were the first climbers to tackle a big wall at extreme altitude. Their target was the south face of Nepal's Annapurna: 12,000 feet of steep rock and ice leading to a 26, 454-ft. summit. As serious armchair climbers will tell you, Annapurna South Face is better than all but a handful of equally gripping classics. One could also argue that all that has happened in the big mountains in the past 30 years has come out of this expedition and out of this book. Bonington and his team—most of whom subsequently died in the mountains—represented a kind of "greatest generation" of modern mountaineers. They pioneered a new, bolder approach to high altitude climbing, and this book is about how they hit the big time.

Annapurna South Face

Sports & Outdoors

Mountaineering

Cassell & Company

I Chose to Climb

Littlehampton Book Services Lt

Behind its discreet if imposing facade in London's Pall Mall, the Travellers Club has long been known to the wits of nearby Whitehall as the Foreign Office canteen. And suspected by some to be a meeting-place of MI5. Or is it MI6? This quintessential English gentleman's club counts however amongst its twelve hundred-odd members not only foreign officers accredited or covert but also statesmen, businessmen, newsmen and explorers, lawyers, judges, academics and clerics, archeologists and art experts, soldiers, sailors, authors, accountants, bankers, doctors and a dental surgeon. And, as this collection shows, many part-time men of letters. Their tales cover every continent - from the Arctic to Antarctica; from Australia, Arabia and America to Oxford and Savile Row; the Far East and the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Africa and the East End; atop Everest or Etna and (frequently) under arrest. Former ambassadors, consuls and foreign correspondents provide behind-the-scenes insights into some of the twentieth century's most memorable events. Its personalities are the subject of tales by Club members with enviable, top-level access. From Beijing to Barking the authors' adventures are multifarious - and often hilarious. There is here, as one contributor writes, high-life, low-life and no-life. Banquets contrast with the bleakness of life under Communism, the boredom of post-colonial Aden. Romance glows in highly unromantic places. Travellers are trussed like chickens and tossed into trains; command armies, record Maria Callas and edit Evelyn Waugh; encounter gunmen in Moscow and guerillas in Dhofar, risque security risks, recalcitrant vehicles and implacable officialdom . . . From Patrick Leigh Fermor's evocations of antiquity to a near-assassination in Iraq, More Tales from the Travellers is a celebration of that very British being, a gentleman abroad. This collection is a sequel to Travellers' Tales which was published in 1999.

More Tales from the Travellers

WINCHESTER, Simon

NEWBY, Eric

Fiennes, Sir Ranulph

GALL, Sandy

FERMOR, Patrick Leigh

Travel

M.Tomkinson Publishing

Adrenaline Classics continues to bring to the fore the work of the father of modern mountaineering, the celebrated climber and writer, Sir Chris Bonington. Everest—The Unclimbed Ridge is a genuine classic of Everest literature, a book that series editor Clint Willis calls "the real climber's Into Thin Air." Bonington and coauthor Charles Clarke tell the story of Bonington's most tragic expedition—a bold attempt on the fearsome Northeast Ridge of Everest. This is the expedition that killed two of Bonington's closest friends—two young men who were part of mountaineering's greatest generation; Joe Tasker and Peter Boardman set out one morning and never made it back. With 24 black-and-white photos and spectacular, edge-of-your-seat climbing, the book offers some of the most moving and powerful moments in modern mountaineering writing. "This was an epic, groundbreaking ascent by one of the most talented teams ever to hit the Himalaya."—Stephen Venables (author of Everest: Alone at the Summit)

Everest: The Unclimbed Ridge (Adrenaline Classics)

Clarke, Charles

Individual Sports

Da Capo Press

The first volume of Bonington's memoirs, 'I Chose to Climb' tells of his initiation into mountaineering as a schoolboy culminating in the ascent of the North Face of the Eiger and his decision to turn professional.

I Chose To Climb

Phoenix

The Next Horizon, the second volume in Chris Bonington's autobiography after I Chose to Climb, picks up his story from 1962 and relates his subsequent adventures as a mountaineer, photographer, journalist and expedition leader alongside eminent climbers including Doug Scott and Don Whillans, throughout an extraordinary decade of adversity, thrill and discovery. The book opens with a journey to Chile to climb the Central Tower of Paine. Bonington then recounts his ascents across the globe; from the Old Man of Hoy in Scotland, the Eiger in Switzerland, to Sangay in Ecuador to name but a few. He concludes in the summer of 1972 with preparations for his ambitious autumn Everest expedition. This revealing narrative of Chris Bonington's experiences provides an insight into the charismatic generation of climbing personalities with whom he travelled, as well as his development into the celebrity we know today.

The Next Horizon: From the Eiger to the South Face of Annapurna

Biographies

Vertebrate Publishing

Sir Chris Bonington is a household name as a result of his distinguished mountaineering career during which he has lead pioneering expeditions to the summits of some of the most stunning mountains in the world. The Everest Years shares the story of his relationship with the highest and most sought-after peak on the planet, Everest, and his ultimate fulfilment upon finally summiting in 1985 at age fifty.Bonington chronicles four expeditions to the Himalaya and Everest, including the 1975 South-West Face expedition on which he was leader and on which Doug Scott and Dougal Haston became the first Britons to summit the mountain. Bonington also recounts expeditions to K2 and The Ogre (Baintha Brakk) in the Karakoram, and Kongur, in China, describing passionately each attempt: the logistics, glory, and tragedy, seeking to explain his perpetual fascination with the highest points on earth, despite repeatedly enduring the trauma of losing friends, and often placing huge responsibility upon anxious loved ones left at home.The Everest Years reveals Bonington's love and appreciation for his ever-supportive wife Wendy, the loyal Sherpas, the companions sharing his mountain memories including Doug Scott, Dougal Haston, Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker and Mo Anthoine, and of course the glorious peaks of the Himalaya and Karakoram mountain ranges. Following I Chose to Climb and The Next Horizon, this final instalment of Bonington's autobiography will take you through a huge spectrum of brutally honest emotions and majestic landscapes.

The Everest Years: The challenge of the world's highest mountain

Quest for Adventure: Remarkable feats of exploration and adventure

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Sea, Ice and Rock: Sailing and climbing Above the Arctic Circle

KNOX-JOHNSTON, Robin

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