A Human History

Himalaya

The first major history of the Himalaya – an epic story of peoples, cultures and the world's highest mountains

Empires, explorers and sacred summits - an epic story of the roof of the world. 
 
In Himalaya, award-winning writer and climber Ed Douglas traces the intertwined histories of the mountains and their people. From Buddhist pilgrims and imperial explorers to mountaineers and freedom fighters, he reveals how these peaks have shaped spirituality, science and geopolitics for millennia. 
 
Drawing on years of travel and meticulous research, Douglas combines geography, biography and adventure into a sweeping narrative of conflict, resilience and wonder across the most dramatic landscape on Earth. 
 
 
‘Magnificent… unlikely to be surpassed’ Telegraph 
‘A magisterial account of the complex human history of the Himalaya’ The Times

Magnificent ... a far-reaching, compendious and elegantly turned examination of a region and its peoples, this book is unlikely to be surpassed

A magisterial account of the complex human history of the greatest mountains on Earth  ... fascinating ... scrupulously and movingly detail[ed] ... Douglas weaves a far richer tapestry, showing how this is a sacred landscape influenced by very worldly concerns

A panoramic history of the region ... Such a complex range of subjects is not easy to press into a coherent narrative ... Douglas ... does so with extraordinary aplomb ... rigorous and informative ... highly readable ... never lacking freshness and rich in compelling detail

A scholarly yet entertaining synthesis of hundreds of years of history ... [Douglas] portrays not only nuns and monks but also courtesans, mountaineers, kings, horse-traders, tea merchants, spies, architects, botanists, soldiers and politicians from Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Sikkim, China and India - as well as from Britain, the British Raj, American, Russia and continental Europe ... a labour of love twenty-five years in the making

In the suitably immense Himalaya, Ed Douglas logs the achievements and travails from Paleolithic times to the present day of the peoples who have laboured in and around Asia's mountain spine ... enlivening Himalaya's history with a host of minor characters ... Such unsung endeavours are a delight ... The research is impressive ... always authoritative ... Anyone with a serious interest in the Himalayan region will want to buy it and will find it invaluable

His observations are sharp, and in many passages, his writing glows

A fascinating account that portrays the [Himalaya] range as a crossroads rather than a human desert

Ed Douglas is an award-winning writer who has reported from the Himalaya for over twenty-five years, covering the Maoist insurgency in Nepal and the Tibetan occupation. The author of a dozen books, including a biography of Tenzing Norgay, he is also a climber with first ascents in the Himalaya, and edits the Alpine Journal. He lives in Sheffield.

'Magnificent ... this book is unlikely to be surpassed' Telegraph 
 
This is the first major history of the Himalaya: an epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains. 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 DUFF COOPER PRIZE 
 
An epic story of peoples, cultures and adventures among the world's highest mountains: here Jesuit missionaries exchanged technologies with Tibetan Lamas, Mongol Khans employed Nepali craftsmen, Armenian merchants exchanged musk and gold with Mughals. 
 
Featuring scholars and tyrants, bandits and CIA agents, go-betweens and revolutionaries, Himalaya is a panoramic, character-driven history on the grandest but also the most human scale, by far the most comprehensive yet written, encompassing geology and genetics, botany and art, and bursting with stories of courage and resourcefulness. 
 
'Magisterial' The Times 
 
'His observations are sharp...his writing glows' New York Review of Books 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOARDMAN TASKER AWARD FOR MOUNTAIN LITERATURE

Ed Douglas

A glorious survey of Britain's high places . . . The writer and climber brings colour and carnival to his account of a country and people shaped by its mountains

Engrossing . . . a must-read for anyone with an interest in past, present and future of Britain’s mountains . . . wonderful . . . rich in detail and incident . . . a nuanced, clear-eyed and informative picture

Rich and adventurous . . . always smart and well informed

Britain’s mountains have rich, dramatic human histories that linger to this day . . . untold, eye-opening stories of conflict and control surrounding our wildest places

The mountains, constant and unchanging on any human scale, are a good lens through which to view our preoccupations . . . Douglas’s central message is right: we cannot separate ourselves from the landscape; it is place that makes people

A heady and exciting time-lapse of British history mapped onto the land’s topography … Highly readable and approachable . . . A fully absorbable chronicle . . . as dramatic as any Victorian novel . . . The kind of book to return to again and again

This book is completely enthralling and original – and can only have been written by someone with a profound love of our uplands. The sense of time through geology and of space through elevation gives the book an epic scale; readers are left in no doubt that uplands are a unique witness to our island story and to many of our natural predicaments. Our fragile landscapes have a fine new biographer

Deeply researched and authoritative, Douglas has produced a definitive history of the peoples, cultures and lands of our rocky isles from the most magisterial and far-seeing perspective. Every page holds a fascinating nugget – I learned so much

Our hills and mountains, though scattered, are a kingdom of their own. Nobody has ever gathered into a book their human story, their geography, their past and their future, before. Ed Douglas has achieved this with elegance and passion

Douglas’s analysis is broad, deep, and brought to life with human stories. Its conclusions are profound…the book also earns the hope of its subtitle

The Strange History and Vital Future of Britain’s Mountains

Britain’s mountains are our grandest and wildest places, their vast openness providing inspiration and escape. But they are now so revered that we overlook the many peoples who long inhabited them and the dramatic history of plunder and dispossession that explains how strangely empty these regions have become. 
 
From the earliest Brittonic tribes to present-day tensions between farmers, tourists and ecological activists, Upland repopulates Britain’s mountains with the kings and monks, soldiers and poets, engineers and industrialists, visionaries and campaigners who made them what they are. Derided for centuries as uncivilised wastes, Britain’s uplands in fact hosted richly cultured, distinctive and resilient populations. And yet by the time Romantic poets ‘discovered’ the beauty of these places and industrial workers sought escape in them, the land itself had been denuded by clearances, famine and the needs of sheep and landowners. The creation of national parks has since ensured their preservation, but as activists now see mountains as a logical place to begin restoring biodiversity, Britain’s uplands have once again become sites of conflict. 
 
As the poet Waldo Williams wrote, mountains are rich in their poverty. As Upland shows, the tension between upland communities and those who wish to control them is as old as the hills. To appreciate that richness and to understand that tension, this book provides the history of Britain from a fresh perspective: the view from the mountains. There has never been more urgent need for it.

Ed Douglas

Praise for Upland

A glorious survey of Britain's high places . . . The writer and climber brings colour and carnival to his account of a country and people shaped by its mountains

Engrossing . . . a must-read for anyone with an interest in past, present and future of Britain’s mountains . . . wonderful . . . rich in detail and incident . . . a nuanced, clear-eyed and informative ...

Rich and adventurous . . . always smart and well informed

A glorious survey of Britain's high places . . . The writer and climber brings colour and carnival to his account of a country and people shaped by its mountains

Engrossing . . . a must-read for anyone with an interest in past, present and future of Britain’s mountains . . . wonderful . . . rich in detail and incident . . . a nuanced, clear-eyed and informative ...

Rich and adventurous . . . always smart and well informed

A glorious survey of Britain's high places . . . The writer and climber brings colour and carnival to his account of a country and people shaped by its mountains

Engrossing . . . a must-read for anyone with an interest in past, present and future of Britain’s mountains . . . wonderful . . . rich in detail and incident . . . a nuanced, clear-eyed and informative ...

Rich and adventurous . . . always smart and well informed

Books by Ed Douglas

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