The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc

The life of T. Graham Brown, physiologist and mountaineer

The Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc by Peter Foster is the biography of scientist
and mountaineer Thomas Graham Brown, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the
mountain earned him the soubriquet, and whose achievements in the Alps and
Greater Ranges place him at the forefront of British mountaineering between
the two world wars.

Born in Edinburgh in 1882, Graham Brown first pursued a career in the sciences
as a physiologist – his exacting father demanding the highest standards – and
the results of his research, largely unrecognised at the time, now underpin
current understanding of the nervous control of movement in animals and man.
His mountaineering career began in earnest after the First World War. From
rock climbing in the Lake District he progressed to guided climbs in the Alps,
where in 1927 he was fatefully introduced to Frank Smythe with whom he made
the groundbreaking first ascents of the Sentinelle Rouge and the Route Major
on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc.

This resulted in an obsession with the mountain and a feud between the pair
that smouldered and flared for twenty years. Ambitious, determined and
uncompromising in his views, he never left others feeling neutral: Geoffrey
Winthrop Young thought him «a vicious lunatic», yet Charles Houston felt
closer to Graham Brown ‹than almost anyone else I know›. Graham Brown’s life
was one of turbulence in his career, relationships and in the mountains,
whether on expeditions to Mount Foraker, Nanda Devi and Masherbrum, or most
frequently, the Alps.

Peter Foster has drawn upon diaries, letters and extensive archival research
that illuminate the highs and lows of Graham Brown’s scientific and climbing
careers, and explores the imbalance between the significance of his
achievements and the lack of recognition he received. But, above all, The
Uncrowned King of Mont Blanc allows one to hear Graham Brown’s voice:
querulous, opinionated and, to the discomfort of his many adversaries, almost
always right.