Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine,

Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Korthorn.

In today's episode, we're welcoming Ed Caesar to the podcast.

Ed has written an extraordinary new book called The Moth and the Mountain, a true story of love, war and everist.

It's the tale of a remarkable man called Maurice Wilson and his wild attempt in the 1930s to fly to and then

scale Mount Everest.

Speaking to Ed was our content director Dave Musgrove.

But can you just drop us into the story?

Just tell us who Morris Wilson was, where he was born,

and into what sort of circumstances?

Absolutely.

So Morris Wilson was born in 1898 in Bradford.

He was the son of a mill owner.

And I think had it not been for the First World War, he would have had an unremarkable life and he wouldn't have

troubled historians or biographers in any way but as for a lot of other young men who went through what he went through

in the First World War, the conflict changed everything for him and after the war he really struggled to settle down, to find happiness, he

traveled the world, he burnt through marriages, and eventually in 1932 he hit upon this

extraordinary idea that was going to redeem his life.

It was going to save him in some way.

He was going to fly a plane to Everest, try and crash land on one of the lower slopes, and then walk, climb the rest of the

way to the summit of the mountain, thus becoming the first person to climb Mount Everest.

Which is a pretty understandable thing to want to do isn't it?

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