James Morris challenges the tourist cliches and looks at the impact of human presence and the layers history in the landscape. He reflects upon issues of identity, exploitation and regeneration; it is a land of beauty and of hardship where - in this post industrial, post rural economy - Tesco and tourism are now the great employers. These are the contrasting realities of the Welsh landscape - that seen by the many visitors and that experienced by most inhabitants. Morris moves between tourist hot spots and the terraces and back streets where the majority of people live. The latter are often hard bitten unpretty places, often built for reasons that no longer exist, no longer the world's largest producer of iron, coal, copper or slate, these are places that have lost their historic and heroic status, sometimes even their raison d'etre. Regeneration is taking place, but it is taking its time. By contrast the tourist landscape is one of pleasure seeking and escape - this is the Wales that visitors are sold and want to see. But in a small land this selling of culture for the tourist pound has complex consequences that build on the complexities of a relationship that has shaped so much of the landscape.

'As I studied the maps, one thing about them captured my imagination - Across this blank space was written one challenging word, "Unexplored"' In 1937 two of the twentieth century's greatest explorers set off to explore an unknown area of the Himalaya, the breath-taking Shaksgam mountains. With a team of surveyors and Sherpas, Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman located and mapped the land around K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. It was their greatest venture, and one that paved the way for all future mountaineering in that area of the Himalaya. For Shipton and Tilman, exploration was everything, with a summit a welcome bonus, and Blank on the Map is the book that best captures their spirit of adventure. With an observant eye and keen sense of humour, Shipton tells how the expedition entered the unknown Shaksgam mountains, crossing impenetrable gorges, huge rivers and endless snow fields. There's a very human element to Shipton's dealings with his Sherpa friends, and with his Balti porters, some of whom were helpful, while some were less so. The expedition uncovers traces of ancient cultures and visits vibrant modern civilisations living during the last days of the British Empire. Only when all supplies are exhausted, their clothes in tatters and all equipment lost do the men finally return home. A mountain exploration classic.

Upon that Mountain is the first autobiography of the mountaineer and explorer Eric Shipton. In it, he describes all his pre-war climbing, including his Everest bids of the 1930s, and his second Karakoram survey in 1939, when he returned to Snow Lake to complete the mapping of the ranges flanking the Hispar and Choktoi glacier systems around the Ogre. Crossing great swathes of the Himalaya, the book, like so many of Shipton's works, is both entertaining and an important addition to the mountain literature genre. It captures an important period in mountaineering history - that just before the Second World War - an ends on an elegiac note as Shipton describes his last evening at the starkly-beautiful snow lake, before he returns to a 'civilisation' about to embark on a cataclysmic war.

A unique appreciation of the hills of Wales; their character, the inherent quality of their landscapes, their resonance and histories. -- Welsh Books Council

Don Whillans has an iconic significance for generations of climbers. His epoch-making first ascent of Annapurna's South Face, achieved with Dougal Haston in 1970, remains one of the most impressive climbs ever made - but behind this and all his other formidable achievements lies a tough, recalcitrant reality: the character of the man himself. Whillans carried within himself a sense of personal invincibility, forceful, direct and uncompromising. It gave him sporting superstar status - the flawed heroism of a Best, a McEnroe, an Ali. In his own circle, his image was the working-class hero on the rock-face, laconic and bellicose, ready to go to war with the elements or with any human who crossed his path on a bad day.

Using unpublished diaries, Jim Perrin, the acclaimed author of The Villain and Menlove, tells the story of the greatest exploring partnership in British history. In the 1930s Tilman and the younger Shipton pioneered many routes in Africa and the Himalayas and found the key to unlocking Everest. They crossed Africa by bicycle, explored China with Spender and Auden, journeyed down the Oxus River to its source and, with no support, opened up much of the Nepalese Himalaya. In the words of Jim Perrin, 'The journeys of discovery undertaken through two decades by this pair of venturesome ragamuffins are unparallelled in the annals of mountain exploration.' Jim Perrin writes of his source-material: 'These unpublished diaries, journals, and extensive correspondence have not previously been used to present a portrait of the most productive friendship in the history of mountain exploration. What they reveal is, in Shipton's phrase, "a random harvest of delight" gathered by two uniquely bold and engaging characters from the great mountain ranges of the world during the golden era of their first western exploration. Between geographical excitement, the nature of arduous travel in difficult and uncharted terrain throughout a lost epoch, and the quirkiest and most stimulating of friendships, the theme is a gift, and one that has long been waiting for adequate treatment'.