With the help of yaks, the team set up an advanced base camp at twenty-one thousand feet, below the North Col, a saddle between Everest and Changtse, its satellite peak to the north.

As she puts it, The flat green world of my parents' hogless, horseless farm – its dullness, its flies, its quiet ripped open daily by the fumes and whining of machinery – twisted away and left me with a brilliant city life of books and films and witty friends.

It was a close, sultry day: devoid of sunshine, but with a sky too dappled and hazy to threaten rain {...}

The man who makes himself a slave to gold is a miserable wretch indeed, winning for his prize the Dead Sea apple - golden without, but ashes within.