Sandra Noel, Everest Pioneer

Everest Pioneer: The Photographs of Captain John Noel

Sandra Noel

This is simply a wonderful book about a wonderful man doing wonderful things. For those of us who have long admired Captain Noel's superb photography, his ground-breaking cinematography and his adventurous tales, this is the icing on the cake. For everyone else, it's going to be a joy to see for the first time such amazing photographs of exotic places from a bygone age. I envy you.

Indeed, you will swoon at the gorgeous hand-tinted plates and marvel at Noel's near-solo exploits in unknown lands. If it is your interest in Mallory & Irvine that has led you to this book then you will not be dissapointed: this is now a leading resource on the subject. If you are an Everest buff then prepare to see some of the most famous and atmospheric photographs of the mountain and surrounding landscapes. Ethnology your bag? Noel was among the first to really appreciate the Tibetans and their customs. For his time he was unusually anticolonial. His contributions to exploration in the Himalayas and Tibet were far beyond the achievements of any other individual to date, and his single-handed visual documentation of the early British Everest expeditions will forever be his great legacy.

Sandra Noel knows how important her father's work is and has done a wonderful job in its preservation; her ambition is to build a museum space for his huge collection of photographic plates and equipment, and sales from this book will no doubt benefit her enterprise.