The Mountaineer: British Culture and the Heroic Masculinities of Climbing

This research project examines the social, cultural and political meanings of heroism within the evolution of the British mountaineer. It charts the development of the mountaineer as hero, from the age of empire to the age of the indvidual. Given the widespread interest in the achievements and masculinities displayed by the British hero, seen in studies into military heroes and polar adventurers, the mountaineer is curiously absent. There is little reflection about their own specific contribution to British culture and the public imagination. The aim of the study is to add the mountaineer into the burgeoning historiography of the national hero. My research takes into account the construction and varied understandings of heroism, heroics, renown and celebrity of the mountaineer. It is a story of the evolution of a modern male identities that cannot be told without recourse to particular social and political lenses - in particular, ideas of nationality and local or regional identity; conceptions of race and empire; and questions of social background such as gender, class and status. Several essays have already been published, including an article in Media, Culture and Society (2007) on the media reception of mountaineer and mother Alison Hargreaves; a chapter exploring the heroic leadership and Englishness of John Hunt and Chris Bonington in a book on Heroines and Heroes (2008), and an article entitled 'Reality TV on the rockface - climbing the Old Man of Hoy', Sport in History (2007), which detailed the early evolution of climbing on British TV and, more broadly, the celebrification of post-war British climbers.

Publications

'"Motherhood, ambition and risk": mediating the sporting hero/ine in Conservative Britain', Media, Culture and Society, 29(3), 2007, pp.387-406.

'Reality TV on the rockface - climbing the Old Man of Hoy', Sport in History, 27(1), 2007, pp.44-63.

'The politics of totemic sporting heroes and the conquest of Everest', Anthropological Notebooks, 12(2), 2006, pp.35-52.

'Heroic leadership, mountain adventure and the English: John Hunt and Chris Bonington compared', in Hart, C. (ed.) Heroines and Heroes: Symbolism, Embodiment, Narratives & Identity (Kingswinford: Midrash Publishing, 2008), pp.247-260.