It's probably the cynic in me, but I have never quite trusted George Mallory's famous assertion that he wished to climb Mt Everest because it's there.
It's quite possible that this public-school toff and son of a clergyman meant what he said because it was pretty much thedictum of the Imperial Britain in which he lived.
But it has been suggested his comment was a glib, irritable retort to a journalist — nasty, nosy creatures — who had evidently asked the same question everyone was asking at the time: why in God's name are you doing this?
Ask Sir Ranulph Fiennes — an adventurous English toff of a different generation — this question and you get, I suspect, something closer to the truth for him, Mallory and all those mad dogs and Englishmen who go climbing things in the midday sun.
He admits early in his new book Beyond The Limits, a distillation of a lifetime of lessons from his gutsy and hairy adventuring, that he is what he is because he needed to earn a crust.
It is a response, he admits, that is not always appreciated. But it sets the tone for an honest, vivid whip through the boy's own exploits which have led the Guinness Book Of Records to dub him the world's greatest living explorer.
From his yarns about fighting communist insurgents in Oman, parachuting into Norwegian mountains and travelling the length of Canada's British Columbia by river, to his famous circumnavigation of the globe by both poles and his unsupported crossing of Antarctica, Fiennes approaches writing about his exploits with the same sort of enthusiasm he applies to adventuring.
At the end of each chapter he summarises the lessons learned from his exploits. Some are pat, such as if you find a rotten apple in your team, get rid of it immediately. Others are hopelessly optimistic, such as it is easier to avoid fear than to overcome it.
But if his coaching in being a hard bastard is a bit ineffectual, his escapades make for a quick, lively, often amusing read matched with dozens of photographs that are mostly astonishing but at times rather grim (his frost-bitten fingers need a strong stomach).
I would suggest you read it not because it's there, but because Fiennes needs the money.
