Celebrating Climbing Days by Dorothy Pilley - with Kim Sherwood and Dan Richards - Wednesday 17th July 2024

As part of Dan’s series of in-conversation events with brilliant women around the UK – some adventurers, some artists, some writers – who embody something of Dorothy’s buccaneering, transcendent spirit, join us when the very brilliant Kim Sherwood talks about Dorothy Pilley’s legacy with Dan.

Order a copy of Climbing Days and receive a free ticket to the event! Just select "Book & Ticket" option. Alternatively, choose our "Ticket-Only" option for £5 (which can be used towards a copy of Climbing Days or one of our other featured titles, at the event).

When Dorothy Pilley first began climbing in the 1910s, female mountaineers were seen as a dangerous liability, their achievements ignored, unrecorded or disbelieved. Undeterred, Dorothy proved herself on the vertiginous slopes of Wales, Scotland and the Lake District before tackling rock faces in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rockies, Mount Fuji and the Himalayas. Her tireless championing of fellow women climbers and her own trailblazing example helped establish female alpinists as serious mountaineers with impressive records on bravery, skill and endurance.

First published in 1935, Climbing Days tells a daredevil tale of adventure, near-death slips and rapturous achievement in high places, interleaved with moments highlighting the particular challenges of being a woman in a sport seen as the province of men.

Kim Sherwood is an author and creative writing lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, where she lives in the city. Kim Sherwood’s first novel, Testament (2018), won the Bath Novel Award and Harper’s Bazaar Big Book Award. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Pick. In 2019, she was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second book, Double or Nothing (2022), is the first in a series commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate to expand the world of James Bond. The follow-up, A Spy Like Me, is out now. Her latest literary novel, A Wild & True Relation (2023), was described by Dame Hilary Mantel as “a rarity – a novel as remarkable for the vigour of the storytelling as for its literary ambition. Kim Sherwood is a writer of capacity, potency and sophistication.”

Dan Richards is an acclaimed non-fiction writer specialising in art, travel and adventure. His first book, Holloway – co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Stanley Donwood – was published by Faber and became a Sunday Times bestseller. Dan’s second book, The Beechwood Airship Interviews took a journey into the creative process, headspaces and workplaces of some of Britain’s celebrated artists and craftsman including Bill Drummond, Dame Judi Dench, Jenny Saville, Manic Street Preachers and Stewart Lee.

Climbing Days is an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great-great-aunt and uncle, Dorothy Pilley and I. A. Richards. Using Dorothy’s 1935 mountaineering memoir as a guide, Dan climbed across Europe, ending with an ascent of the mighty Dent Blanche in the high Alps of Valais.

His latest title is Outpost, a book about far-flung shelters and eyries, isolation and wilderness. Asking what draws people to the ends of the world, Outpost features visits to Cairngorm bothies, French lighthouses, Japanese shrines, Icelandic sæluhús, and polar bears in Svalbard.

Dan’s next book, Overnight, will be published by Canongate in March 2025.