Memoirs of a Mountaineer

Two books bound together as one volume: Helvellyn to Himalaya (Chapman's pre-war climbs in the Lake District, the Alps and the Himalaya, including the first ascent of Chomolhari) and Lhasa: The Holy City (his account of the 1936 British diplomatic mission to Tibet, when the country was effectively closed to outsiders). Chapman went on to become one of the great wartime SOE operatives behind Japanese lines in Malaya, but this book captures him as a young mountaineer and explorer in a world that was about to disappear.