Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank Find!
Being married to a climber and mother of another, I automatically reached for this book when I saw the picture of Wasdale adorning the cover. Set at the turn of 19th century, the book revolves around the life of a young man, George Hazzard, as he struggles to reconcile his family life (largely his relationship with his strict authorative father), his conflicting attitudes to the Boer War, and the contradictory influences of his climbing friends. All this against a wonderful evocation of life at Wasdale Head, at the time the mecca for English climbers.
A century ago,early rock climbers were pitting themselves against what were then the most challenging rock faces in the country, on Scawfell at the head of Wasdale. Some of the climbers were locals like the Abraham brothers from Keswick, but the most famous of them all was the short sighted O G Jones who went on to write the classic book on rock climbing. It was Jones who made the first epic ascent up Lords Rake to Scawfell Pinnacle solo and in stockinged feet.
In the book it is this climb of Jones that is the centre of conversation among the group of climbers who regularly stay at the Waswater hotel. One such climber is George Hazard who escapes from his medical studies to the fells whenever he can. It is the time of the Boer War and to the British public's disbelief, the British army is struggling to cope with their Boer opponents. In the face of defeat the British tactics become increasingly ungentlemanly and brutal. In a mirror image of the war, the climbers in the Wastwater hotel, including George, face a similar dilemma ~ is the best man, or climber,the one who puts safety first or the one who takes the most risks? Constantly searching for new routes on the crags, the gentleman amateur climbers must take more and more risks, just as in life the British soldiers are also finding that they have to change in order to survive.
What happens in the end is for the reader to discover. Roger Hubank has writen a wonderfully evocative novel. Published in 2001, it not only gives us beautiful descriptions of the Lake District crags and landscape, but also gives a sense of the time, when men were caught up in the exhilaration of climbing, regardless of the dangers and risks involved, in order to prove themselves. But for George, his family and friends life is changing forever.
Fantastic ~ a real gem!
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8 September 2009 from Anne
Finds
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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