' The price of life is death'. For Mallory as for all of his generation death was but 'a frail barrier that men crossed smiling & gallant every day'. As climbers they accepted a degree of risk unimaginable before the war. What mattered now was how one lived & the moments of being alive. While the quest for Mount Everest may have begun as a grand imperial gesture it ended as a mission of revival for a country & a lost generation bled white by war. In a monumental work of history & adventure Davis asks not whether George Mallory was the first to reach the summit of Everest but rather why he kept climbing on that fateful day.