A re-exploration of the historic journey made by the first man to walk the Alps from 'end to end'.

'On a midsummer's morning, nearly 120 years later, Simon Thompson followed in hisfootsteps, setting out to explore both the mountains and the man.' —The Times

'On a midsummer's morning, nearly 120 years later, Simon Thompson followed in hisfootsteps, setting out to explore both the mountains and the man.' —The Times

A Long Walk with Lord Conway

An exploration of the Alps and an English adventurer

Simon Thompson

Are-exploration of the historic journey made by the first man to walk the Alpsfrom ‘end to end’. In 1894, Martin Conway became the firstman to walk the Alps ‘from end to end’ when he completed a 1,000-mile journeyfrom the Col de Tende in Italy to the summit of the Ankogel in Austria. On a midsummer’s morning, nearly 120 years later, Simon Thompson followed in hisfootsteps, setting out to explore both the mountains and the man.

A charming rogue who led a’fantastically eventful’ life, according to TheTimes , Conway was a climber and pioneering explorer of the Himalaya,Spitsbergen, the Andes and Patagonia; a serial pursuer of American heiresses;an historian, collector and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge; a companydirector and stock market promoter of dubious gold mines and non-existentrubber forests; the founder of the Imperial War Museum; the first foreigner tosee the Russian crown jewels after the revolution; a successful journalist andauthor of over thirty books; a liberal politician; and a conservative MP. Shortly before he died, he was created 1st Baron Conway o fAllington.

Conway was a clubbable man who counted Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Henry James,Rudyard Kipling, J. P. Morgan, John Ruskin, Mark Twain and Edward Whymper amonghis many friends and acquaintances. A n imperialist,a dreamer, a liar and a cheat, Conway ‘walked in sunshine all his life’,according to contemporaries, but he was also a restless, discontented man,constantly searching for meaning and purpose in his life. And that search thatled him back, time and time again, to the Alps.

In AvLong Walk with Lord Conway , Simon Thompson retraces Conway’s long journeyover the peaks, passes and glaciers of the Alps and rediscovers the life of acomplex and remarkable English adventurer.   Simon Thompson is the author of Unjustifiable Risk? The Story of British Climbing , which wa sshortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize in Britain and the Banff Prize for Mountain Literature in Canada.

£16.99 hardback

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320 pages
ISBN: 1908493801