October 2019 book review

THREE LETTERS FROM THE ANDES and A TIME TO KEEP SILENCE, by Patrick Leigh-Fermor
I review these two books together, for they are both barely 100 pages long and could easily have been placed in a single volume. The first is, as its title suggests, the only slightly edited text of three letters he wrote to his wife about an ‘expedition’ he undertook to Peru, ostensibly to climb some unnamed peaks, but really to hang with his friends and absorb the atmosphere of a country which at that time (the late 50s) had been only lightly touched by a tourism trade which has grown exponentially since the ease of plane flight made such places as Machu Picchu accessible to almost everyone. His friends make an interesting crew: the Duke of Devonshire, a couple of talented writers like himself and some acclaimed alpine mountaineers anxious to test their skills in an alien landscape. Paddy himself did not participate in these climbs, confining himself to cooking and chronicling events. His letters, exquisitely written as all his writing is, conveys all the travails, carousing and adventures in a totally engaging way.

The second book is also as advertised, describing his brief sojourns in two Catholic monasteries, the Benedictine establishment of St Wandrille’s in Normandy, known for its relatively benign regime, and then at Grand Trappe, a far more austere Cistercian monastery where silent contemplation and almost continuous prayer are the orders of the day: every day. And while Paddy seems to settle quickly into the life of the first, he cannot manage the severity of the second. One wonders how he managed to smoke in either of them. He was well known to smoke up to 100 fags a day (though he lived to 96, incredibly), and must have had to conceal his addiction with great care. Interestingly, he doesn’t mention it.

Finally he travels to Cappadocia in Turkey to visit an abandoned monastery cut into the limestone  mountainsides. Once again, with his immaculate prose, we find ourselves in his extraordinary mind as he imagines what life must have been like there. In all three sections there are detailed and fascinating accounts of the history of the places he visits, and as in his masterpiece A Time of Gifts, these diversions are what really bring the accounts to life.

SHACKLETON, by Roland Huntford
Being the life and exploits of one of Britain’s most renowned polar explorers. Like Scott, he ultimately failed in his ventures, though unlike him, survived his attempts and brought all his men home with him. Unlike Scott, he was an Anglo-Irishman, and therefore not quite the solid member of the establishment Scott was. But like Scott, he failed to learn the lessons the Norwegian explorers Nansen and Amundsen tried to teach him. They said the only way to explore the Poles was to ski and use many dogs. But both Brits had some strange aversion to a kind of ‘unmanly’ device which skiing represented to them, and saw dogs more as pets than beasts of labour, which of course huskies and their like are bred to be. As a result the Brits failed where the Norwegians succeeded.

There wasn’t a lot of love lost between Scott and Shackleton. In fact they detested each other, I think it is fair to say. And Huntford makes it clear whose side he was on. When Huntford published his notorious book “Scott and Amundsen” in 1979, he didn’t try to hide his contempt for Scott, whose arrogance and stubbornness, in his view, cost not only his own life but that of several of his comrades. The book resulted in a re-appraisal of one of Britain’s most iconic ‘heroic failures’, and it was only in 2003, when Randolph Fiennes published his own book “Captain Scott” that an attempt was made to rehabilitate Scott’s reputation. Fiennes felt Scott was the victim more of bad luck than bad judgement, and makes no secret of his dislike of Roland Huntford, who has never even been to the poles, never mind led voyages of exploration. That may be the case, but one thing is inescapable: Huntford can write. His account of Shackleton’s life is one of the most thrilling biographies I have ever read.