During the three-month-long expedition, Hillary & his two companions skied 900 miles across the forbidding & beautiful expanse of Antarctica to the South Pole. Early on, the relationships in the little tent disintegrated to acrimony & distrust, & exploded on their return, damaging friendships & resulting in profound soul-searching. This is the story of that journey: a chronicle of profound isolation, of great stamina & skill, of the mental & emotional toll exacted by travel in extreme environments. It is also a meditation on a lifetime spent on the edge, a memory book of more than 30 expeditions in the Himalayas, the Andes, the Arctic & the Antarctic. It tells of triumphant adventures
- travelling with his father, Sir Edmund Hillary, & Neil Armstrong to the North Pole, climbing Everest twice
- & bitter tragedies, like the loss of his mother & sister in a plane crash in the Himalayas, & the shattering K2 climb where Peter was the only one of eight climbers (including Alison Hargreaves) to survive. In the Hillary Steps is a radical departure from the adventure genre, a literate & evocative tribute to the crafts of polar travel & mountaineering, a Shackleton-like tale of endurance, & a compelling contemplation on a life of adventure & accomplishment.

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Meet Mohan, a rhino with painfully sore feet.
And Patch, a falcon with a broken wishbone.
And Kachina, a bear cub with

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Meet Mohan, a rhino with painfully sore feet.
And Patch, a falcon with a broken wishbone.
And Kachina, a bear cub with

...

Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet & drama critic, but he has his faults too. Fired from his newspaper, months behind on his alimony payments & disgusted with a world that undervalues him, Ted seeks a few months repose & free drink at Swafford Hall, the country mansion of his old friend Lord Logan. But strange things have been going on at Swafford. Miracles. Healings. Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted. ...

Strange things have been going on at Swafford Hall. Miracles, Healings. Phenomena beyond the comprehension of a mud-caked hippopotamus like Ted Wallace. An old, sour, womanising, cantakerous, whiskey-sodden beast of a failed poet & drama critic, but he has his faults too. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS is remarkable & original, savagely comic & profoundly humane, celebrating the human spirit in a manner that will simultaneously shock, delight & inspire. Read by the author in this new, abridged version, THE HIPPOPOTAMUS hurtles towards a breathtaking climax. ...

' You can't expect an arse like me to tell a story competently. It's all I can bloody do to work this foul machine. I've counted up the words processed, a thing I do every hour &, if technology can be trusted, it looks as if you're in for 93, 682 of them. Good luck to you. You asked for it, you paid me for it, you've got to sit through it. ' So starts THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. A novel as surprising & entertaining as you would expect. ...