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The Sunlit Summit: The Life of W.H. Murray
William Hutchison Murray (1913 - 1996) was one of Scotland's most distinguished climbers in the years before and after the Second World War. As a prisoner of war in Italy, he wrote his first classic book, Mountaineering in Scotland, on rough toilet paper
- GenresMountaineeringBiography
416 pages, Hardcover
First published August 15, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 5, 2023
William Hutchinson Murray (1913 - 1996) ist einer der bekanntesten schottischen Bergsteiger und Schriftsteller. Das Bergsteigen war schon früh seine Leidenschaft, mit dem Schreiben begann er erst als Kriegsgefangener während des zweiten Weltkriegs. Sein erstes Buch schrieb er gleich zweimal, denn die erste Version wurde konfisziert und vernichtet. 1951 leitete er gemeinsam mit Eric Shipton die Expedition zum Mount Everest, auf der man die Route entdeckte, die später zur Erstbesteigung führen sollte. Ab den 1960er Jahren konzentrierte er sich auf den Naturschutz und wies die ersten Landstriche aus, die geschützt werden sollten. 1966 wurde er mit OBE ausgezeichnet.
Eines der ersten Dinge, die ich in der Biografie über W.H. Murray erfahren habe, war dass er ein sehr privater Mensch war und dass seine Witwe nicht wollte, dass eine Biografie geschrieben wurde. Vielleicht war das der Grund, dass die Biografie so unpersönlich gewirkt hat. Robin Lloyd-Jones hat sicherlich gut recherchiert, aber seinen Fakten fehlt die persönliche Note. Den Menschen W.H. Murray habe ich nur selten auf den Seiten von Sunlit Summit gefunden.
Seine Bücher übers Bergsteigen und Schottland gelten heute als Klassiker. Aber Murray hat auch zahlreiche Romane geschrieben, stand dabei immer ein wenig im Schatten von John Buchan. In seinen späten Jahren gab es einen Rechtstreit zu seinem Buch über Rob Roy, weil er der Ansicht war, dass zu viel von seinem Buch in dem gleichnamigen Film zu finden war. Dieser Streit konnte vor seinem Tod nicht mehr beigelegt werden.
Robin Lloyd-Jones' Biografie hat mich nicht überzeugen können. Er erzählt viel über W.H. Murray, aber er kann ihn mir als Mensch nicht nahe bringen.
Eines der ersten Dinge, die ich in der Biografie über W.H. Murray erfahren habe, war dass er ein sehr privater Mensch war und dass seine Witwe nicht wollte, dass eine Biografie geschrieben wurde. Vielleicht war das der Grund, dass die Biografie so unpersönlich gewirkt hat. Robin Lloyd-Jones hat sicherlich gut recherchiert, aber seinen Fakten fehlt die persönliche Note. Den Menschen W.H. Murray habe ich nur selten auf den Seiten von Sunlit Summit gefunden.
Seine Bücher übers Bergsteigen und Schottland gelten heute als Klassiker. Aber Murray hat auch zahlreiche Romane geschrieben, stand dabei immer ein wenig im Schatten von John Buchan. In seinen späten Jahren gab es einen Rechtstreit zu seinem Buch über Rob Roy, weil er der Ansicht war, dass zu viel von seinem Buch in dem gleichnamigen Film zu finden war. Dieser Streit konnte vor seinem Tod nicht mehr beigelegt werden.
Robin Lloyd-Jones' Biografie hat mich nicht überzeugen können. Er erzählt viel über W.H. Murray, aber er kann ihn mir als Mensch nicht nahe bringen.
November 24, 2025
I first became aware of WH “Bill” Murray around about the time of the release of his final book, The Evidence Of Things Not Seen, where he looked back over some of the stand out points in his life. Completed after his death, it covered his introduction to climbing, his capture by the Germans and his life changing time as a prisoner of war in WW2, and his expeditions to the Himalaya in the post war years. I often find that it can be worthwhile looking at things from another perspective, and The Sunlit Summit by Robin Lloyd Jones does that admirably.
The book is made up of 34 rather short chapters dealing with the many facets of Murray’s life and career. The shortness of the chapters keeps the book fresh, never getting overly bogged down in one period or another, covering everything in enough detail, while providing notes to references which may be of interest for further, more detailed reading.
While the whole book is fascinating, I was particularly drawn to the sections on Murray’s unrelenting work in access and conservation, and his integral part in a variety of organisations, including the National Trust for Scotland, Mountaineering Council of Scotland and the John Muir Trust. What stood out for me was his unwillingness to compromise on points of principle, and his dislike (I feel contempt is possibly too strong a term) for those he found ready to compromise theirs. While to some at the time he may to some have appeared out of step, retrospectively he appears to be far ahead of the game, with many of his views on access and conservation now adopted by the very groups he left.
Murray’s style of writing is also covered in the book, and Lloyd Jones looks at his catalogue of work, as well as the work which went in to the ‘craft’ of writing. That something of the author is revealed in his works of fiction is unsurprising, and while his fiction is now long out of favour and print, it would appear worthy of revisiting. While Murray is often quoted in books and articles, it is for the factual he is now most known, However one line from one of his thrillers struck a chord with me; ‘Happiness falls to men who learn to live in every moment of the present; unhappiness to men who dwell in the past or fear the future.’
The story of how his final work came to be written and published is a saga in itself, and rounds the book off nicely, and I would concur with the author that while it was a very good book it was not his finest, and we can only wonder how it would have been had he lived to complete it. This book is complete though, and is a great all round read. Sharp and well written, it is worth reading by those familiar or not with the work of Murray, proving how great the body of work he left behind was, and reinforcing just how important he was, and indeed still is, in the Scottish outdoor scene.
The book is made up of 34 rather short chapters dealing with the many facets of Murray’s life and career. The shortness of the chapters keeps the book fresh, never getting overly bogged down in one period or another, covering everything in enough detail, while providing notes to references which may be of interest for further, more detailed reading.
While the whole book is fascinating, I was particularly drawn to the sections on Murray’s unrelenting work in access and conservation, and his integral part in a variety of organisations, including the National Trust for Scotland, Mountaineering Council of Scotland and the John Muir Trust. What stood out for me was his unwillingness to compromise on points of principle, and his dislike (I feel contempt is possibly too strong a term) for those he found ready to compromise theirs. While to some at the time he may to some have appeared out of step, retrospectively he appears to be far ahead of the game, with many of his views on access and conservation now adopted by the very groups he left.
Murray’s style of writing is also covered in the book, and Lloyd Jones looks at his catalogue of work, as well as the work which went in to the ‘craft’ of writing. That something of the author is revealed in his works of fiction is unsurprising, and while his fiction is now long out of favour and print, it would appear worthy of revisiting. While Murray is often quoted in books and articles, it is for the factual he is now most known, However one line from one of his thrillers struck a chord with me; ‘Happiness falls to men who learn to live in every moment of the present; unhappiness to men who dwell in the past or fear the future.’
The story of how his final work came to be written and published is a saga in itself, and rounds the book off nicely, and I would concur with the author that while it was a very good book it was not his finest, and we can only wonder how it would have been had he lived to complete it. This book is complete though, and is a great all round read. Sharp and well written, it is worth reading by those familiar or not with the work of Murray, proving how great the body of work he left behind was, and reinforcing just how important he was, and indeed still is, in the Scottish outdoor scene.
April 4, 2019
Robin Lloyd-Jones has written a comprehensive, honest and readable biography of one of Scotland's finest mountaineers, writer and conservationists. I am now inspired to read all W.H.Murray's work
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July 18, 2014W.H. (Bill) Murray has found the perfect biographer in Robin Lloyd-Jones, an outdoor enthusiast and climber, writer in many genres and campaigner for human rights. Probably best known for his Mountaineering in Scotland (written in Italian and German POW camps) and his book on Everest published before the 1953 ascent, Murray was an enigmatic man to put it mildly. His long stay as a Prisoner of War he treasured as a time devoid of distractions during which he explored his own spiritual kinship with remote places. His fame and living depended on the success of his mountaineering books whilst at the same time he maintained a vision of high and wild places preserved in their natural unpopulated state. A pioneer of some of the most challenging climbing routes in the Scottish Highlands (while he was working as a bank clerk in Glasgow pre-war) and in the Himalayas, he maintained that focusing on reaching the summit was to miss the point of the exercise.
Although Murray wrote a kind of autobiography (The Evidence of Things Not Seen) Robin Lloyd-Jones reveals that it was a cut and paste job that was unfinished when Murray died. It is perhaps more revealing for what it didn’t originally say. RLJ so often puts his finger on the contradictions in Murray’s life, making him real: “He wrote about the joys of living in the present moment, in the now, yet for a large part of each day he was absent from the everyday world, lost in deep meditation, or living inside his own mind….” Probably he would have fitted well into a monastic life but increasingly found himself drawn into conservationist campaigning.
If you are interested in the experience of being in remote places you will find this a fascinating book. But perhaps the ground-breaking aspect of the book is to discover the literary influences on Murray’s writing and to explore their implications. He was particularly well-read in the Lake Poets and there are interesting parallels with his output and Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In terms of his style, which marks him out even when he produced his ‘guide books’ on the West Highlands and the islands, RLJ detects an interesting link to R.L.Stevenson and makes an interesting case for considering him as primarily an essayist in the 19th-century mould.
The Sunlit Summit is obviously a work of deep research. Every historic and some contemporary names mentioned in the text have a thumbnail biography in the endnotes, a help to readers who are not as deeply into the history of mountaineering. There are several well-selected archive photos (around half in colour) the most interesting being of the 1950 Scottish Himalaya Expedition whose groundwork contributed to the successful ascent three years later (Murray was not invited to join the team). For Scottish readers, though, the picture of Buachaille Etive Mor catching the sunrise will probably say it all.
Although Murray wrote a kind of autobiography (The Evidence of Things Not Seen) Robin Lloyd-Jones reveals that it was a cut and paste job that was unfinished when Murray died. It is perhaps more revealing for what it didn’t originally say. RLJ so often puts his finger on the contradictions in Murray’s life, making him real: “He wrote about the joys of living in the present moment, in the now, yet for a large part of each day he was absent from the everyday world, lost in deep meditation, or living inside his own mind….” Probably he would have fitted well into a monastic life but increasingly found himself drawn into conservationist campaigning.
If you are interested in the experience of being in remote places you will find this a fascinating book. But perhaps the ground-breaking aspect of the book is to discover the literary influences on Murray’s writing and to explore their implications. He was particularly well-read in the Lake Poets and there are interesting parallels with his output and Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. In terms of his style, which marks him out even when he produced his ‘guide books’ on the West Highlands and the islands, RLJ detects an interesting link to R.L.Stevenson and makes an interesting case for considering him as primarily an essayist in the 19th-century mould.
The Sunlit Summit is obviously a work of deep research. Every historic and some contemporary names mentioned in the text have a thumbnail biography in the endnotes, a help to readers who are not as deeply into the history of mountaineering. There are several well-selected archive photos (around half in colour) the most interesting being of the 1950 Scottish Himalaya Expedition whose groundwork contributed to the successful ascent three years later (Murray was not invited to join the team). For Scottish readers, though, the picture of Buachaille Etive Mor catching the sunrise will probably say it all.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews