The 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest has attracted its share of books, films, reruns and reminiscences. The popular lore is steeped in the heroic mould of intrepid men braving the unknown, melding neatly with the prevailing narrative of Empire, even though it wasn't two ethnic Britons who summitted at 11 a m on May 29, 1953.
Every summit anniversary celebrates not just the exploits of Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand bee-keeper, and Tenzing Norgay, the Indian Sherpa, but the leadership of John Hunt, the British army officer and pukka, granite-jawed sahib. Due obeisance is also paid to illustrious predecessors, most of all George Mallory, who died in a summit attempt on the North Face in 1924, and Eric Shipton, whose exploratory expeditions of the 1930s reinforced the manly, derring-do ethos of the early climbers.
This book presents the, often uncomfortable, counter-narrative; that technology and planning also underpin man's ability to conquer nature. In this case, it is embodied in Griffith Pugh, the eccentrically brilliant physiologist.
The red-haired Pugh was a key member of the 1953 expedition but was ignored or mocked in mainstream accounts. Yet it was his contributions that not only put two men on the 29,029-foot summit but form the foundation of practices commonplace to modern mountaineering and adventure sports. He refined the usable, lightweight oxygen sets that finally took two human beings beyond 28,000-odd feet, the record for the highest oxygen-less ascent on Everest that stood for nearly 30 years and 11 summit attempts, and devised the clothes, footwear, tents, customised food and theories of fluid intake and acclimatisation we now take for granted.
Pugh's seminal contributions to that first ascent may have been forgotten had it not been for the 40th anniversary celebrations in London in 1993. After the proforma speeches, the expedition doctor Michael Ward spoke. "…What I want to talk about tonight is the most important reason why the 1953 expedition to Mount Everest succeeded where all its predecessors had failed, and that is the work of the unsung hero of Everest - Dr Griffith Pugh," he said and described the scientific innovations that had played a pivotal role on that expedition
Sitting in the surprised audience was Pugh's daughter, author of this absorbing and sometimes painfully honest biography. Having endured the worst of relations with her father, whom she knew as a selfish, moody boor, she had attended only to help her long-suffering mother manoeuvre his wheelchair. Ward's speech gave her pause. Pugh died soon after this event but the deeper Tuckey researched the more she realised that the man she hated so pathologically and some mountaineers dismissed as a kook was regarded with deep respect by physiologists and scientists.
This book is an effort to set the record straight for Pugh professionally and Tuckey personally. But it is also a useful addition to Everest history in presenting a clear-eyed view of the politics and politicking that accompanied the conquest of the mountain - including British attempts to keep other European nations from having a crack at it.
Ironically, given the anti-establishment reputation he acquired, Pugh was a typical product of Empire. He was brought up by a nanny in Wales and enjoyed skiing holidays in Switzerland, while his father pursued a successful career as a Barrister in Calcutta. He went to Harrow, was a member of a pre-war British Olympic skiing team and married into minor aristocracy. His wife Doey was related to Ernest Cassel, one of Edward VII's cronies, and his father-in-law was Judge Advocate General. But it was an ill-matched union between a dreamer (she became a devotee of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi long before the Beatles discovered him) and a self-absorbed scientist.
The neglected childhood created an unconventional thinker. That was clear in his choice of science at Oxford - the Classics was considered more the thing for the Right Sort of Chap - and physiology as a career. The Division of Human Physiology in the Medical Research Council was unglamorous but afforded him many opportunities for his line of research.
His deep knowledge of high-altitude survival came from his research at a school of mountain warfare the British set up in Lebanon during World War II. No mean climber, his sound but unpopular advice, however, scarcely endeared him to the Everesters, notably Shipton whom he accompanied on a Himalayan expedition, learning first-hand the drawbacks of the haphazard approach beloved of that generation of mountaineers. Many of these were corrected on the 1953 expedition - not without animosity - but Pugh's painstaking, if seemingly weird, experiments made him the butt of many ignorant jokes.
Yet, for many, like Ward, Pugh was god. Marathon swimmers and runners obligingly hooked themselves to cumbersome monitors (a rectal thermometer in the former case!) to aid his research, Duke of Edinburgh medal challengers - familiar to Indian Public School boys - followed his advice on warm-ups; Olympic athletes competing in the 1968 Mexico Games assimilated his acclimatisation regimen. Even so, underwhelming recognition, an abrasive personality and unhappy marriage left Pugh embittered. For all that, he should be happy with his daughter's warts-and-all biography.
EVEREST: THE FIRST ASCENT
The untold story of Griffith Pugh, the Man Who Made it Possible
Publisher: Ebury (A division of Random House)
Pages: 320
Price: £13.99
