The danger and physical hardship -- all often seeming almost arbitrary (the freezing weather front, or fog that rolls in playing a greater role in success or failure than almost any decisions the climber takes) -- are part of the fun, the fact that an element of luck is vital to success (and, occasionally, survival) part of the fascination (as the reactions to the death-rolls he keeps presenting also seem to attest to).

Torches were on inside some of the other tents and they looked like little orange igloos against the blackness of the cold meadow.

Bravery and cowardice, rest and exertion, danger and safety, right and wrong: the unforgiving nature of the environment sorted everything into these neat binaries. The true blessing of the mountains is not that they provide a challenge or a contest, something to be overcome and dominated (although this is how many people have approached them).

The second group consists of mountaineering disasters, when the aforementioned need to stand atop the highest local geographical point ends in pointless suffering and death. But Macfarlane, a mountain lover and climber, has a more visceral appreciation of mountains than Schama.The book climaxes with an account of Mallory’s fateful ascent on Everest in 1924, one of the most famous instances of an obsessive pursuit. There was a sudden clearing of the atmosphere above me, and I saw the whole summit ridge and final peak of Everest unveiled. The imaginative potency of these greater peaks around the turn of the nineteenth century was formidable, and they frequently became objects of obsession within the minds of their individual admirers.