Des Rubens was a well known and greatly admired Scottish climber. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1973 and was a teacher of Outdoor Education in Craigroyston School Edinburgh from 1979 until retirement in 2011. Des kept diaries of his walks and climbs all over Scotland and wrote accounts of his climbs in the Himalaya, the Caucasus and the United States. This collection of his writings and those of his companions conveys, with a dry wit, his great enthusiasm for the Scottish hills and for all aspects of mountaineering in the greater ranges. Geoff Cohen, who has edited the collection, was one of Des' closest climbing partners for over 40 years. Together they shared many of the adventures recounted here, in Scotland and overseas.

Brent Meersman’s memoir of a humble yet eccentric upbringing in a Milnerton, Cape Town, flat in the 1970’s and 1980’s reads as a stirring eulogy to his schizophrenic mother, yet also as a vivid snapshot in time.

His adoring mother, a horse-loving artist, received only rudimentary treatment and Brent, his brother and father had to look to each other for support. His father battled alcoholism and unemployment, at one point taking the whole family to Belgium, where he had found work, only for them to return a year later, defeated. Traversing a home environment constantly on high alert for something to go wrong, waiting for his mother’s fragile mental stability to shatter, not finding support in his father, whose drinking and absences from home took a punishing toll on the family, bred in the author an almost heroic resilience.

This delicate yet brutal memoir, filled with wry humour, will resonate with many readers.