| Humour, Collected Essays, Climbing Metaphysics |
| A Dream of White Horses (1987) |
| Ed Drummond |
| Mad-as-a-badger climber muses on life & climbing in an off the wall sort of way. Occasionally beautiful, often baffling. |
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| At the Sharp End (1988) |
| Paul Nunn |
| The collected writings of major 50s/60s Peak, Lakes and Wales activist and Greater Ranges climber Paul Nunn under one cover. Thoughtful essays and wise words reflecting on climbing & climbers. |
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| Big Wall Climbing (1974) |
| Doug Scott |
| Fabulously detailed source book of all things big wall from Britain's most prolific and successful mountaineer. |
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| Climbing Ice (1978) |
| Yvon Chouinard |
| Definitive coffee-table book which sanctified the 70s front-point revolution and celebrated the brave new ice world. |
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| Climbing Tales of Terror (1990) |
| Tami Knight |
| Off-the-wall, off-her-head, sick cartoonery on a climbing theme from British Columbia's outrageous Queen of quirkiness. |
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| Eiger Dreams (1990) |
| Jon Krakauer |
| Compilation of Jon Krakauer's magazine articles. Excellent journalism and reportage, together with first-hand experiential climbing stories. |
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| Let's Go Climbing! (1941) |
| Colin Kirkus |
| Legendary inter-war rock hotshot Kirkus writes a 'How To' bible for the Enid Blyton generation, illustrating themes with illuminating autobiographical snapshots from his climbing career. |
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| Mountain Magazine (1969-1991) |
| Editors: Ken Wilson, Tim Lewis, Bernard Newman |
| The most respected mountaineering magazine ever produced which gave little quarter to commercial pressures. Got away with it until about the same time Global Capitalism won the Cold War. Like the Soviet economy, it foundered shortly afterwards, having no Bundesbank to prop it up. |
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| Native Stones (1985) |
| David Craig |
| Nature poet & lyrical writer Craig rediscovers rock climbing and waxes poetical and lyrical about it. He describes his personal interaction with landscape and people using the action of climbing as a conduit to convey his emotions and perceptions, visiting along the way such topics as existentialism, historical analyses, personal reminiscence, descriptive anecdote and climbing ethics. It sounds unreadable, but surprisingly it's great. |
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| On and Off the Rocks/Yes to Dance (1986) |
| Jim Perrin |
| Two compilations of prolific climbing writer Perrin's greatest hits, remixed from the original magazine, newspaper and journal articles. |
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| One Man's Mountains (1978) |
| Tom Patey |
| The Good Doctor Patey, doyen of 50s & 60s Scottish climbing, holds forth entertainingly on subjects as diverse as Scottish Winter first ascents, climbing history, and media circuses, as well as taking satirical pops at the Great & the Good of climbing, circa 1969. |
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| The Ascent of Rum Doodle (1956) |
| W.E. Bowman |
| Bowman mercilessly rips the piss out of Old School mountaineering expeditions in a spoof expedition book.
The starchy, formulaic style of pre-1960s expedition books is hijacked by Bowman to tell a preposterous story of death-or-glory conquest. It involves a 40,000 ft mountain, Yogistan and its revolting inhabitants, Pong the terrible cook, plus the heroic details behind The Men Who Would Go High - and their fiancies. |
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| The Games Climbers Play (1981) |
| Ken Wilson (Ed) |
| Carefully selected anthology of the best Anglophone climbing writing up to the 80s. |
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| The Great Climbing Adventure (1985) |
| John Barry |
| Articulate ex-Royal Marine and Director of Plas-y-Brenin Barry recounts early mishaps and epics in an entertaining series of semi-autobiographical yarns. |
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