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Everest: Wilson became obsessed with the mountain in the 1930s The First World War's lasting marks included machine gun scars, aside from the mental scarring on the young man who was born in 1898. It is believed that Wilson, who had a number of marriages and liaisons behind him when he left England for Everest, had been traumatised by his First World War experiences. After his subsequent climb, he would, all going well, become the first person to arrive on the summit.

Yet somehow he dreamed up the idea of flying a Gipsy Moth from England to Everest where the plan was to crash-land on its lower slopes. When he set out on his quest, he did not know how to climb, and he barely knew how to fly a plane. (8,850 metres) but those brave individuals who were trying to scale the mountain were doing so with all due consideration for weather, health and safety. Both men were legendary figures in Great Britain on account of their heroic endeavours, and it took a brave man to try and emulate what they had done.Įverest is the highest mountain in the world at 29,035 ft. Andrew Irvine (1902-1924) also died at the tender age of 22 in the process of trying to conquer the peak. His body was not found until May 1, 1999. George Mallory (1886 –1924) had taken part in the first three expeditions in the 1920s but lost his life on the mountain. Here, he turns his hand to the story of Wilson, who thought up a risky, thrill-seeking idea that was surely considered madness.īack in the 1930s, official government-sponsored expeditions from various competing countries were trying to conquer Mount Everest with a degree of national prestige at stake. British expeditions had been undertaken to Everest in 1921, 19.

Among the 40-year-old journalist's outstanding credits to date is the story of the world’s longest tennis match he has also written eruditely on the subjects of stolen art, the illicit trade in diamonds and money laundering. Mancunian Ed Caesar, who writes for The New Yorker and who has won eleven significant journalism awards, has a nose for a great story. The nights had turned so cold that his feet felt like blocks of ice. Instead, he was floundering, dangerously, on the glacier 9,000 feet below, and running out of energy. He was not on the summit of Everest, as had hoped. On Saturday 21 April, Wilson turned thirty-six years old. The Moth and the Mountain tells the riveting story of Maurice Wilson, who in his mid-thirties planned to be the first man to climb Mount Everest to its summit after crash-landing a plane on its slopes.