There are four magnificent mountains in Torridon, in the north-west Highlands, but one of them is invisible – or might as well be. Hardly anyone climbs Beinn Dearg, and few people have heard of it. Why? Because it’s 30in short of 3,000ft – so doesn’t qualify as a Munro. Simon Ingram is hilarious as he savages such stupidity. Who, he asks, climbs mountains because of a list? Too many people. They should read this lyrical account of his climbs up Britain’s 16 most evocative mountains instead. In each chapter, Ingram takes a theme – height, terror, myth, science, death, art – and leads an assault (through rain, sun, snow and midges) on the peak that best illustrates it. The result is a riveting, beguiling and highly personal history of mountains and mountaineering: from the Mass Trespass of 1932 to the Scottish peak that was used to weigh the planet; from the very first map of Britain to the haunted Welsh hill famed for its scarlet-eared ghost hounds. I’ve been climbing mountains in Britain for 20 years but I don’t know if I really saw them until I read this book.
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