At the same time every day for the rest of her life, Ruth Mallory would sit in the winged chair by the window and re-read her husband’s letter.
On her deathbed, she told her children that not a day had passed when she hadn’t seen George march through those gates and come striding down the path toward her.
POST 1924
George Leigh Mallory
George’s body was discovered on May 1st, 1999, at 26,760 feet. The photo of his wife Ruth was not in his wallet and there was no sign of a camera. To this day, the climbing fraternity are divided as to whether he was the first person to conquer Everest. Few doubt that he was capable of doing so.
Andrew “Sandy” Irvine
When Irvine’s death was announced in
Despite several expeditions in search of his body, it has not been found. However, in 1975 a Chinese mountaineer, Xu Jing, told a colleague that he’d come across a body, which he described as “the English dead,” frozen in a narrow gully at 27,230 feet. A few days later, before he could be questioned more closely, Xu Jing was killed by an avalanche.
Ruth Mallory
After George’s death, Ruth and the children remained in Surrey, where Ruth spent the rest of her life. She died of breast cancer in 1942, aged fifty.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory KCB
Mallory’s brother, Trafford, died when his plane crashed in the Alps in November 1944, while he was on his way to take command of Allied Air Operations in the Pacific. It was thought he might have been piloting the aircraft at the time.
Trafford died at the age of fifty-two.
Arthur C. Benson
Mallory’s tutor became Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1915, and remained in that position until 1925. He wrote a moving tribute for Mallory’s memorial service at Cambridge, but was too ill to deliver it. He is best remembered for having written the words of “Land of Hope and Glory.”
Benson died in 1925, aged sixty-three.
Brigadier General C. G. Bruce CB MVO
Although severely wounded at Gallipoli, Bruce commanded his regiment on the North-West Frontier until 1920. He was President of the Alpine Club from 1923 to 1925, and appointed Hon. Colonel of the 5th Gurkha Rifles in 1931.
Bruce died in 1939, aged seventy-three.
Geoffrey Young D. Litt FRSL
Appointed as a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1925. Reader in Education at London University in 1932. President of the Alpine Club from 1940 to 1943. Young climbed the Matterhorn (14,692 feet) in 1928 aged fifty-two, and Zinal Rothorn (11,204 feet) in 1935 aged fifty-nine, despite being burdened with an artificial leg.
Young died in 1958, aged eighty-two.
George Finch FRS MBE
Appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1938. President of the Alpine Club from 1959 to 1961. In 1931 three of Finch’s friends fell to their deaths in the Alps, and he never climbed again.
Finch died in 1970, aged eighty-two.
His son, Peter Finch, became an actor. Peter died before he found out that he’d won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Actor in the film
Lt. General Sir Edward Norton KBE DSO MC
Continued his career as a professional soldier, and after being ADC to King George VI was appointed Military Governor of Hong Kong. In 1926, awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
Held the world altitude record, 28,125 feet, until 1953, when Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing conquered Everest.
Norton died in 1954, aged seventy.
T. Howard Somervell OBE MA MB B.Ch FRCS
Spent the rest of his professional life as a surgeon in a mission hospital in Travancore, southern India, where he became one of the world’s leading authorities on duodenal ulcers. In 1956 he retired and returned to England. President of the Alpine Club from 1962 to 1965.
Somervell died in 1975, after a bracing walk in the Lake District, aged eighty-five.
Professor Noel Odell
The Everest Committee turned down Odell’s request to be a member of the 1936 expedition to Everest on account of his age, fifty-one. That same year, he scaled Nanda Devi at 25,645 feet, the highest mountain to have been climbed at that time. No member of the 1936 Everest expedition managed to reach 24,000 feet.
Odell spent the rest of his professional life as a geologist, holding professorships at Harvard and McGill. He retired to Cambridge where he was made an Honorary Fellow of Clare College.
Odell died in 1981, aged ninety-six.
Lt. Colonel Henry Morshead DSO
The tops of three fingers of Morshead’s right hand were amputated after returning from the Everest expedition of 1924. He returned to India in 1926 as a surveyor. He was shot dead while out riding one evening in 1931, in Burma, by his sister’s Pakistani lover.
Morshead was forty-nine when he was murdered.
Captain John Noel
Continued his career as a professional photographer and film-maker. His film
Noel died in 1987, aged ninety-nine.
