He would not leave me alone, so I resolved not to leave him alone. I sometimes woke up thinking about Wilson. It can be hard to know why stories grip writers, but this one caught me by the throat and did not let go. The main reason I wrote the book, however, was that I couldn’t stop thinking about Wilson. In Wilson’s diary, which is held at the Alpine Club, he reflects on his wartime service while he is at the foot of Everest, sixteen years after he won his Military Cross for valour. I knew that assertion must be incomplete, if not wrong entirely. He wrote that Wilson’s service in the First World War had affected him ‘no more and no less’ than any other ‘sensitive and brave’ young man. I was particularly caught by one line in Dennis Roberts’s book about Wilson. I knew Wilson had fought bravely in the First World War, and I wondered how that experience had informed his later adventures. For them, climbing Everest had become a means of redemption. Most of the climbers on the 1920s expeditions to Everest had served in the First World War. I also had a sense that there was much more to say about Wilson – that he had an unexplored hinterland. Wilson’s failure was grandiose and heartbreaking. Failure is always much more interesting than success.

But so did George Mallory, the alpinist who died on Everest in 1924, and there are hundreds of books about him. Davis doesn’t describe Wilson’s story in much detail, but even the outline of his tale is fascinating. How did you first come across Wilson’s story, and what made you think it was worth further investigation?Įd Caesar: I first read about Wilson in Wade Davis’s magnificent book, Into the Silence, which was published in 2011. Tom Killingbeck: Since his death, Maurice Wilson’s name has most often appeared as a whimsical tangent or footnote in histories of Everest, often alongside the words ‘eccentric’ or ‘doomed’.

We were sad not to be able to welcome Ed Caesar to talk about his new book ‘ The Moth and the Mountain’ with Andrew O’Hagan on Tuesday 17 November – but delighted that we can instead bring you this conversation between Ed and his editor, Tom Killingbeck, about the book and why Ed felt compelled to write it.

The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar