Pioneering climbing in Scotland the 1930s, combat against Rommel's forces, three years in Nazi prison camps, and a near fatal alpine accident marked W.H.Murray's early life. Three exploratory Himalayan ventures followed including the critical 1951 reconnaissance trip that established the route by which Everest was climbed two years later. Thereafter he built a reputation as a writer and environmental polemicist and was deeply involved with the struggle to protect the Highlands from commercial exploitation.

Author Biography

W.H. Murray was born in Liverpool in 1913. Two years later his father was killed at Gallipoli, so his family moved back to Glasgow where Murray spent his childhood, school and college years before beginning a career in banking. He made his first climbs in 1934 and later joined a talented group of climbers in the Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland. Murray describes how they strove to regain the dynamism of the early Scottish climbing that had been lost in the trauma of the Great War. After surviving long periods as a prisoner of war, attributed by some to his study of philosophy, Murray returned to mountaineering and later took part in key Himalayan expeditions of the 1950s. In 1951 Murray was on the critical reconnaissance that established a potential route up Everest via the Khumbu Icefall. Marrying happily, Murray built a career as a writer and conservationist, writing Highland Landscape a counsel of protection for the National Trust of Scotland. Murray died in 1996, and The Evidence of Things not Seen was published posthumously.