After Everest: The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary

After Everest is the memoir of the remarkable T. Howard Somervell: physician, soldier, artist, musician, mountaineer and missionary.

Somervell is perhaps best known for his participation in the earliest British quests to climb Mount Everest in the 1920s, including the now legendary second attempt during which George Mallory and Sandy Irvine vanished on their way to the peak. In After Everest, Somervell gives a fascinating and detailed account of the expeditions, including his own then-record ascents on the mountain and culminating on that fateful day when Mallory and Irvine disappeared into the clouds and entered mountaineering lore forever.

This in itself would be enough for one life and one book, but this story encompasses so much more.

In his clear, accessible and conversational style, Somervell tells of his idyllic youth and an upbringing founded on strength of family and faith. He recounts his love of climbing and his early adventures on the peaks of Britian and Europe. We are with him during his service as an army surgeon amidst the horrors of the trenches during World War One. And we see his true life’s labour working in his later years as a medical missionary among the poor of Southern India.

After Everest is an adventure tale, a history, and the story of a life lived joyously and to the full. As Sir Francis Younghusband writes in his foreword, it is “a testament to that spirit of adventure without which life would be a poor thing and progress impossible. . . . I am perfectly certain that everyone who reads it will be wanting to climb mountains, paint pictures, make music, do all the good that it is in him to do, and, in general, enjoy life to the full like Somervell.”

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Note: All publisher proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the C.S.I. Kanyakumari Medical Mission in Neyyoor, India, where the author worked for many years.