With what relish Jim Perrin must have written the dateline concluding this idiosyncratic biography: "Ariège, Bastille Day 2012". In Shipton & Tilman, the Pyrenees-based Perrin has ignited some impish Fete Nationale firecrackers of his own to slip under the door of mountaineering's conceit. His aim has been to reclaim these two explorers from an establishment within which "they never truly belonged".

On 29 May 1953, the New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of the planet's highest mountain, described by Hillary as "a symmetrical beautiful snow cone".

The team of three Europeans claim a misunderstanding between themselves and a group of Sherpas deteriorated into an ugly scene

British rider on course to win first major stage race

IOC announce decision

The Highland cottage owned by the late TV presenter Jimmy Savile should be transformed into a mountaineering museum, according to a leading author and broadcaster.

Fans of Three Cups of Tea, the non-fiction book about building schools for rural children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, awoke to news this morning that one of its two authors, David Oliver Relin, had died at the age of 49 in what the authorities said was suicide.

Patrick Edlinger, who has died aged 52  after falling down stairs at his home, was often described as “the God of free-climbing”. Overcoming sheer vertical rock faces and horizontal overhangs, often without safety ropes or even shoes, he was widely known in France simply as “le Blond,” and among his English-speaking fans as “the blond Adonis”.

The rock-climber, who gave the sport mass appeal but was beset by inner demons, has died at 52

Fiorenzo Magni, who died yesterday at the age of 91, was one of the biggest and most controversial names from the golden age of post-war Italian cycling.

The mountaineering world has led tributes to one of the UK's most respected climbers after he was killed alongside two other Britons in a devastating avalanche.

The romantic moralist of spy fiction returns with a shaded tale of the movies and Munich

In a recent feature on bike innovations we looked at the Pulse bike from Teague which lights up like a Tron lightcycle.

Rant