Tag Archives: Autobiography

Isobel Wylie Hutchison: North to the Rime-Ringed Sun

We were northward bound for Alaska and her blue midnights! Her golden blossoms! Her trackless forests! Her naked tundras! I’ve written about the redoubtable Isobel Wylie Hutchison before—a Scottish lady of independent means who spent her life travelling and botanizing, often while walking prodigious distances alone. She recorded her travels in articles for National Geographic … Continue reading Isobel Wylie Hutchison: North to the Rime-Ringed Sun

Isobel Wylie Hutchison: Peak Beyond Peak

I am quite clear in my own mind that I’d set my face in the right direction, though I don’t pretend to know why I should be destined to visit Greenland any more than Timbuctoo. Maybe I’m not, and I shall be able to visit Timbuctoo another day, for one journey leads naturally to another. … Continue reading Isobel Wylie Hutchison: Peak Beyond Peak

Ralph Bagnold: Two Memoirs

In the following pages I shall try to trace the unpremeditated steps by which a few army officers, with no initial thirst for exploration, and no desire to do anything unusual except to see the country they were in came gradually to break away from this conventional city outlook towards things outside; and how, beginning … Continue reading Ralph Bagnold: Two Memoirs

Sydney Scroggie: The Cairngorms Scene & Unseen

The Cairngorms lay beneath what was now a local bonnet of cloud. Everything else was in sunshine and dazzling with colours, cobalts and browns and bright greens, all the peaks around glowing with the pristine pigments of an illuminated manuscript, as far as distant Lochnagar and Beinn a’ Ghlo. Then even the interior gloom began to … Continue reading Sydney Scroggie: The Cairngorms Scene & Unseen

Nan Shepherd: The Living Mountain

[…] I toiled up the last slope and came out above Glen Einich. Then I gulped the frosty air—I could not contain myself, I jumped up and down, I laughed and shouted. There was the whole plateau, glittering white, within reach of my fingers, an immaculate vision, sun-struck, lifting against a sky of dazzling blue. … Continue reading Nan Shepherd: The Living Mountain

RAF “Special Duties” Pick-Ups In France: Three Memoirs

The whole of the effort put into pick-up operations in France throughout the war—measured by aircraft and personnel costs—was minute. In a well proportioned history of World War Two it might deserve a sentence or a footnote. And yet it is hard to imagine how the irregular forces in France could have developed to anything … Continue reading RAF “Special Duties” Pick-Ups In France: Three Memoirs

Arthur Conan Doyle In The Arctic

It is bloody work dashing out the poor little beggars’ brains while they look up with their big dark eyes into your face. Arthur Conan Doyle, Arctic diary entry, 3 April 1880 In February 1880, a third-year medical student from Edinburgh abandoned his studies, temporarily, to sign on as the ship’s doctor of the S.S. … Continue reading Arthur Conan Doyle In The Arctic

Arthur Gould Lee: No Parachute & Open Cockpit

I reflect on how amazing it is that I’m here at all, sailing along nearly three miles up in a flimsy contraption made of wood and quivering fabric, suspended on air, sustained only by the wind rushing under the wings. I think how not long ago the aeroplane didn’t exist at all, no man had … Continue reading Arthur Gould Lee: No Parachute & Open Cockpit

Eric Brown: Wings On My Sleeve

A new hydraulic-pneumatic catapult was installed which had to be proofed so that its performance could be checked before it was introduced into service. For the first launch with it we used an Avenger as being an old and well-tried faithful. It was a startling maiden effort. The aircraft was shot off so violently that … Continue reading Eric Brown: Wings On My Sleeve