How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer by Mick Conefrey
| How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer by Mick Conefrey | |
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| Category: Travel | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A very good, if bitty, look at female exploration throughout history. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 224 | Date: October 2011 |
| Publisher: Oneworld Publications | |
| ISBN: 978-1851688418 | |
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Scott, Amundsen, Bleriot, Stanley and Livingstone, John Glenn, et all - any child should be drummed out of school if they can't name half a dozen explorers, travel pioneers and adventurers. But give them a gold star if they can name a single female entrant to history's list. Hence this book, for while some mountains have been topped by a lady first of all, and some landmark achievements by the guys have been quickly followed by the gals, there is just too much ground to be made up in recognising what the fairer sex have done in the world of, well, going round our world.
So we have potted biographies arranged by region type and chronology, what it was like for the ladies to meet the people they found the other end, contrasts between similar explorers (such as round-the-world yachtsmen and -women), and a lot more. More or less there is an overarching narrative, but the encyclopedic knowledge Conefrey offers us does get in the way somewhat. The middle chunk is a list of bullet-points, really, and I sometimes found the arrangement of them on the page in ways that were only meant to disguise that confusing, with paragraphs given the same heading as main sections.
Before that we've had to contend with Conefrey's love of the box-out, and while there is great mileage to be had in looking at esoteric subjects such as cannibals and their female discoverers, and underwear for the global explorer, it can distract at times from what surely could have been written in one thorough block - Conefrey can definitely write warm, engaging and descriptive information.
To the subjects at hand, and it is evident when we get to cover 19th and 20th Century American ladies at large that a great majority of them were tied, if not to their husbands at home or alongside them, but at least to their husband by name. A great majority have double surnames through marriage, and it's surprising then to meet Ms Earhart, who became so world famous through her maiden name. This book doesn't make a show of pointing that out, but it's there to be seen. Elsewhere, however, we have just as much to be done in future. I was lamenting the lack of a photo section when noting just how many of the entrants were described as beauties (a look at google images shows that to be a loose description, most of the time) - and it's obvious that we don't need to be told the guys are good-looking, just whether they achieved their aim or not. The lasses had to fit a type to get funding and press, most of the time, and this volume perpetuates that a little carelessly.
But all those, believe it or not, are minor quibbles, and probably me wishing for a future-proof edition here - there are so few books that have covered this ground, and even fewer that do it this well, it's galling to find small flaws. This as a result is great, but might be bettered. Going from such quaint, homely names as Ethel Brilliana Tweedy (I kid you not) to those a bit more well-known, going from the Middle East to outer space, and uncovering a lot of worthwhile knowledge en route, this is definitely just as rugged, worldly-wise and successful as the male explorers whose female colleagues are hereby getting much important historical impetus.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
File this next to A Corkscrew is Most Useful: The Travellers of Empire by Nicholas Murray - similar, in that it covers the history of travel and exploration in near-antiquity by disguise of an advise book.
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You can read more book reviews or buy How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt: A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer by Mick Conefrey at Amazon.com.
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