George Mallory was a schoolteacher who loved mountain climbing. Mallory once told a reporter that he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, “because it is there.” On his third try in 1924, at age thirty-seven, he was last seen four hundred feet from the top. His body was found in 1999, and it is unknown whether he and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, ever reached the summit. Jeffrey Archer tells his tale, and draws his own conclusion about whether this remarkable man fulfilled his dream.

Jeffrey Archer was educated at Oxford University. He has served five years in Britain’s House of Commons, fourteen years in the House of Lords, and two in Her Majesty’s prisons, which spawned three volumes of highly acclaimed Prison Diaries. All of his novels and short story collections have been international bestsellers. Archer is married with two children and lives in London and Cambridge.