An excellent backgrounder piece on the peculiar English character - something which most non-English fail to understand. ** Why do it? Because it's there ** One type of explorer (like the man who crossed Britain free by bus) is peculiarly English. At the start of the 19th century, the Rev Joseph Wolff, one of the oddest explorers this country has ever produced, announced that he was heading into the wilds of Central Asia to find the Lost Tribes of Israel. For many years, dressed in full canonical garb, he harangued Afghans, Sikhs, Turks, Indians and Uzbeks, trying, and failing, to convince them of the superiority of the Anglican faith. Many of his hearers did not take kindly to this. Wolff was beaten, stripped, threatened with death in a variety of complicated ways and thrown into a bug pit by the Emir of Bokhara. After completing his travels, he retired to a vicarage in Somerset and never did anything remotely interesting again. With so much of the world already discovered, mapped and accessible via Google Earth, the "it" in "because it's there" has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. It may still be Everest, though the mountain is now horribly crowded, but it may also be a trans-island bus journey, or the Pennine Way, or the marathon, or even simply following a single sports team to every fixture. This longing for a personal quest, embedded in the British soul, is partly cultural, a remnant from the days of empire when great swaths of the world remained mysterious, awaiting only an Englishman in a pith helmet to be "discovered". Alongside the names of Livingstone, Speke or Thesiger, came hundreds of unknown, middle-class British explorers: missionaries, scientists, soldiers, but also many who were simply up for a challenge. When George Leigh-Mallory declared "Because it's there!" in response to the question he had been asked so many times before, he was not intending to frame some profound truth, but stating the blindingly obvious. Everest may be a larger challenge than most, but to Mallory it was only logical that if there was a big mountain, a British mountaineer would want to climb it. The British urge to get away and achieve some self-made mission is, of course, mirrored by the desire to come home: in the words of T.S. Eliot "to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time". Ernest Shackleton wrote that "no one who has not spent a period of his life in those stark and sullen solitudes of that sentinel the Pole will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of man". [snip] >From The Times April 11, 2008 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article3724105.ece ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India

Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar wrote: > An excellent backgrounder piece on the peculiar English character > - something which most non-English fail to understand. > > ** Why do it? Because it's there ** > > One type of explorer (like the man who crossed Britain free by bus) > is peculiarly English. > <snip> > > > >From The Times April 11, 2008 > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article3724105.ece Harshawardhan - It is pleasing to see that during my enforced absence from the list the high standard of your snippets from "other sources" has been maintained, if not actually risen. This article is indeed a very worth while read and goes, I would submit, a long way to show how this peculiar British trait bore a major part in the 'Expanse of Empire'. Of course other factors were involved, including greed and a quest for glory, but a major part was the desire to both seek out the unknown and to a desire to 'improve the lot' of the indigenous populations. I would endorse your thoughts that this article well merits a read in its entirety; it may help some, to whom the very word 'Empire' acts as does a red rag to a bull, understand some of the complex motivations involved. I found the quote from Mallory particularly moving, for it was the Everest expedition that ended in his death that my connection led. Yours Aye Andrew Sellon

Dear Listers, I recollect that there has been some controversy as to whether his famous quotation, generally attributed to Mallory, is indeed his. I have read it attributed to Eric Shipton, another famous British climber. Upon searching the internet I came across in Google Books 'Brewer's Famous Quotations' by Nigel Rees. Page 309 in it sets out the controversy in detail and mentions a correspondent of NYT in 1923 as a possible source. It also mentions that this very famous quote was used by Kennedy while justifying the expedition to the moon. There it was attributed to Mallory. Arvind Kolhatkar, Toronto, April 11, 2008