RaveThe Guardian (UK)... what a story ... How has this story slipped into a crevasse in the glacier of time, lying frozen and largely forgotten for so long? Perhaps the world is better now at embracing eccentricity and – (not too much of a) spoiler alert! – failure than it was. Where once he was dismissed as a madman and an embarrassment, now Wilson can be properly celebrated. In another kind of adventure in which chaps took themselves to the most unforgiving places, Donald Crowhurst’s story is a more intriguing one than that of Robin Knox-Johnston, who succeeded where Crowhurst failed. Perhaps Wilson is to Everest and aviation what Crowhurst is to sailing alone around the world ... this is a personal book. Not only does [Caesar] set out almost obsessively to get to understand Wilson and his motivation, he also wants to understand his own almost-obsession ... Wilson’s story is bonkers, but also beautiful. The profile Caesar builds is compelling, colourful and warm – of a complex, contradictory man with admirable self-belief and a healthy disregard for class boundaries and national borders. The boy from Bradford for whom Mount Everest’s icy peak was a shining light, the flame to which the Moth was inexorably drawn. And that’s a story that rarely ends well.
