Books by Stephen Venables

Nanda Devi is one of the most inaccessible mountains in the Himalaya. For fifty years had repeatedly tried and failed to reach the mountain. Then, in 1934, Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman found a way in. Their expedition is recounted in Shipton's Nanda Devi - one of the most inspirational travel books ever written.

In Painted Mountains, Stephen Venables - the first Briton to climb Everest without oxygen - details the stories of two very different expeditions: the first ascent of 6,000-metre Kishtwar-Shivling in the Indian Himalaya alongside Dick Renshaw, before embarking on an Indo-British Expedition led by Harish Kapadia to Rimo: the Painted Mountain.

Dancing, singing, swooping - there was something birdlike about his energy, joy and laughter - but also the fleeting, enigmatic quality of his life. When he was two he lost all his speech, as autism turned his life - and ours - into a baffling challenge. He generated - and continues to generate - huge amounts of laughter.

High and wild places have dominated Stephen Venables' life and now he has written a full autobiography which explores how and - more importantly - why he became a mountaineer, and reveals a series of never-recorded adventures on four continents.