Making use of unpublished diaries, journals, and extensive correspondence, the extraordinary story of two British mountaineers who single-handedly mapped out much of the Himalayas—including Everest—and the mountains of Africa

In the 1930s, Tilman and the younger Shipton pioneered many routes in Africa and the Himalayas and found the key to unlocking Everest. They crossed Africa by bicycle, explored China with Spender and Auden, journeyed down the Oxus River to its source and, with no support, opened up much of the Nepalese Himalaya. In the words of Jim Perrin, "The journeys of discovery undertaken through two decades by this pair of venturesome ragamuffins are unparallelled in the annals of mountain exploration." This is a fresh and original portrait of one of the greatest exploring partnerships in history, and of the quirky, humorous friendship that underpinned it.