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John D Burns

Outdoor author and speaker.

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    • The Hot Tent Diaries
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  • Jack Longland – Biography: Mark Lambert | Podcast

  • Peter Silburn: The Norwich Cycling Campaign | Podcast

  • Steve Micklewright: Scottish Rewilding Alliance | Podcast

  • David Barter. Great Scottish Bike Rides| Podcast

  • It’s Up to Us: Path restoration project | Podcast
Jack Longland – Biography: Mark Lambert | Podcast
Peter Silburn: The Norwich Cycling Campaign | Podcast

Harold Raeburn – The Steps of a Giant: Peter Biggar | Podcast

April 13, 2024April 26, 2024John D Burns
Harold Raeburn is acknowledged as the father of Scottish mountaineering. At the dawn of the twentieth century he was pushing the boundaries of [...]

Alan Hepburn: The drive to Re-wild Scotland | Podcast

April 2, 2024April 2, 2024John D Burns
Listen to Alan Hepburn talking about Scotland’s rewilding journey. Alan is a life-long environmentalist, who fought for a moratorium on whale hunting in [...]

Sarah Lister: Kinder Scout | Podcast

February 29, 2024February 29, 2024John D Burns
Kinder Scout is an iconic hill in Derbyshire. Love it or loath it you can’t ignore it. Listen to Sarah Lister talking about her new book on 15 best walks on Kinder. [...]

Fort William Mountain Festival: Anna Danby | Podcast

January 18, 2024January 18, 2024John D Burns
Anna Danby talks about the huge range of activities and events available at Fort William Mountain Festival [...]

Heather Dawe: Dreams of lost Buttresses | Podcast

December 8, 2023December 9, 2023John D Burns
Listen to heather Dawe talking about her new book of short stories, Dreams of Lost Buttresses. [...]

Harrison Ward: Cook Out | Podcast

November 21, 2023November 21, 2023John D Burns
Have you ever been on a trek and looked at your meal of highly processed dehydrated food and thought, “Is there a way [...]

Amelia Dalton: Pages from My Passport | Podcast

October 27, 2023October 27, 2023John D Burns
Amazing tales of adventure from sailor and explorer Amelia dalton. [...]

Joe French: Out of Mind | Podcast

September 21, 2023September 21, 2023John D Burns
In this podcast John D. Burns talks to mountaineer and producer / director, Joe French, about his important new book, Out of Mind. [...]

Stuart Younie: It’s Up to Us | Podcast

September 1, 2023September 1, 2023John D Burns
Do we take our hills for granted? Do we ever stop to think about the toll our boots and wheels are taking on [...]

Steve Chilton: Voices from the Hills | Podcast

August 3, 2023August 3, 2023John D Burns
John Burns talks to fell runner, Steve Chilton, about his life running in the mountains and his work as an author. Previously published [...]

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John D. Burns has spent over forty years among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands. He is an author and public speaker. His books tell of his adventures in this iconic landscape and have become classics for those who love wild places.
Find out more about John click here.
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Outside In Podcast
Outside In Podcast

From the Highlands of Scotland, climbers, hikers and nature lovers talk about their experiences in the wild

Jack Longland – Biography: Mark Lambert | Podcast
byJohn D Burns

John D. Burns talks to Mark Lambert about his book, A man for all mountains, celebrating the remarkable life of mountaineer, broadcaster and educator, Jack Longland.

Mark Lambert has produced far more than a biography. He’s recreated an era when great unclimbed cliffs still existed, Everest remained a mystery, Greenland’s highest summit was unclimbed, and Britain’s finest climbers simply got on with extraordinary adventures. It was however something else, something quite striking that captivated me about this book. Longland himself was clearly an excellent writer. Many climbing biographies rely on modern narrative around sparse historical sources, but here the subject’s own words repeatedly become the highlights of the book. That, perhaps more than anything, explains why his voice has echoed through climbing literature for nearly a century.

For anyone interested in the Golden Age of British mountaineering, it’s an immensely rewarding read.

Mark Lambert

Jack Longland was one of Britain’s complete mountaineers: technically gifted, intellectually curious, adventurous, modest and seemingly happiest whenever there was unexplored ground ahead.

Here are a few extracts from the book…

Of Greenland and black and white photography.

‘In the clear northern light we could see the broad, unbroken line of the ice floes ahead, punctuated with big icebergs.’

‘The mountains faded as the coast bent away, a line of snow-marked peaks, with clean, white glaciers dropping to the fjords between. At once came a realisation of the drab inadequacy of most arctic photographs on seeing for the first time the glittering ice, the cold brilliance of the sky.’

‘The next day they woke to calmer seas. And soon they encountered their first Inuit, a pair hunting on the floes some four miles from the coast.’

‘The team spent an hour and a half on the summit. Fountaine was busy with his boiling-point thermometers, eventually producing similar results from all three to give a height of 12,250 feet (3,734 metres).’

‘Courtauld took theodolite readings to link in with his work at Camp VII, and Munck, rather sheepishly, produced a Danish flag.’

‘They had made the first ascent of the highest mountain in the Arctic, but as yet it had no name. Sometime later, the Place-name Committee in Copenhagen decided on Gunnbjørn Tinde. ‘Tinde’ means ‘summit’, and ‘Gunnbjørn’ recalled the tenth-century Viking Gunnbjörn Ulfsson, who was driven by a storm into the seas west of Iceland, saw glaciers to the west and was thus the first to discover Greenland.’

Speaking of his famous descent with eight porters on the 1933 Everest expedition.

On the journey to reach the campsite.

‘Perched on the north face of Everest, it was also the most inhospitable, the most precarious and probably the most dangerous. The word ‘campsite’ had no meaning here – this was a tiny ledge to which a six-by-four-foot tent had been made to cling only after snow and ice had been hacked out and a stony platform of sorts scraped together at its outer edge. Even then the tent floor sloped crazily downwards and its outermost third overhung the edge, flapping over the face that fell 6,000 feet to the Rongbuk Glacier.’

‘The north face of Everest is made up of slabs overlapping like tiles on a roof pitched at about forty-five degrees. These slabs are devoid of holds or features so that ice or snow clings to them only here and there; progress depended upon the tenuous grip of boot nails and a steady balance. There were few if any anchor points, so if one man were to slip, he would pull with him any others to whom he was roped.

So they had climbed unroped.’

jack Longland was also an accomplished broadcaster appearing on many radio panel games which were among the most popular media shows of his generation.

https://youtu.be/bSKaNjFotK0?si=PvUATPdj_vbpAa_1

A Man for all Mountains is available from all good bookstores,

Jack Longland – Biography: Mark Lambert | Podcast
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Jack Longland – Biography: Mark Lambert | Podcast
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Peter Silburn: The Norwich Cycling Campaign | Podcast
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Steve Micklewright: Scottish Rewilding Alliance | Podcast
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David Barter. Great Scottish Bike Rides| Podcast
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It’s Up to Us: Path restoration project | Podcast
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Dan Bailey: UKHillwalking.com | Podcast
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Bobby Motherwell: Singer/Songwriter, Poet and Climber | Podcast
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Climbing in Yosemite: A Memoir – Dennis Gray | Podcast
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Martyn Howe: The Coast is Our Compass | Podcast
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Matt Heason: Wild Rock | Podcast
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  • Jack Longland – Biography: Mark Lambert | Podcast
  • Peter Silburn: The Norwich Cycling Campaign | Podcast
  • Steve Micklewright: Scottish Rewilding Alliance | Podcast
  • David Barter. Great Scottish Bike Rides| Podcast
  • It’s Up to Us: Path restoration project | Podcast

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