Last Englishmen, The: Love, War and the End of Empire

- Blurb -

John Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalayas. Michael Spender was the first to survey the northern approach to the summit of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers - W.H Auden and Stephen Spender - achieved literary fame, they vied to be included on an expedition that would see an Englishman be the first to reach the summit of Everest, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain's struggle to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine each man's wartime loyalties.From Calcutta to pre-war London to the snowy slopes of Everest, The Last Englishman tracks a generation obsessed with a romantic ideal. As political struggle rages in Spain, the march to war with Germany seems inevitable, Communist spies expand their ranks and the struggle for Indian independence enters its final bloody act, writers and explorers, Englishmen and Indians must pick their cause. The Last Englishman is an engrossing story that traces the end of empire and the stirring of a new world order.