Fallen : Everest and the Enigma of George Mallory

'Mick Conefrey's Fallen is a marvellously researched and written story about the enigma of George Mallory and the fulfilment of his "Because it's there!"' Peter Hillary'Mick Conefrey's gripping account explores the 1924 expedition and the enigma of the man who nearly made it to the summit.' Financial Times'Mick Conefrey has become one of our finest gazetteers of the Himalaya.' The SpectatorIn the years following his disappearance, George Mallory was elevated into an all-British hero - handsome, charismatic and daring, he was the 'Galahad' of Everest, who had died while taking on the ultimate challenge.

But he was also a risk taker who could never get behind the wheel of a car without overtaking the vehicle in front; a climber who pushed himself and those around him to the limits; and a chaotic technophobe who was forever losing equipment or mishandling it, putting himself and his colleagues in danger. Based on diaries, letters, memoirs and thousands of contemporary documents, Fallen is a forensic account of Mallory's last expedition to Everest in 1924, as well as an attempt to get to know the real Mallory; to get under his skin, understand the forces that made him and destroyed him and separate the man from the myth.