International bestselling author Jeffrey Archer returns with a triumphant historical novel, Paths of Glory.
Paths of Glory, is the story of such a man—George Mallory. Born in 1886, he was a brilliant student who became part of the Bloomsbury Group at Cambridge in the early twentieth century and served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during World War I. After the war, he married, had three children, and would have spent the rest of his life as a schoolteacher, but for his love of 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 remains a mystery whether he and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, ever reached the summit.
In fact, not until you've turned the last page of Archer's extraordinary novel will you be able to decide if George Mallory should be added to that list of legends, while another name would have to be removed.
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. All of his novels and short story collections--including A Prisoner of Birth, False Impression, and Sons of Fortune--have been international bestsellers. Archer is married with two children and lives in London and Cambridge.
Roger Allam is a British actor who has worked extensively for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and in the West End. He played Javert in the original London production of Les Misérables, and Falstaff in the Shakespeare's Globe 2010 production of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. He has been nominated four times for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor, winning twice, and he has also won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor.