No Picnic on Mount Kenya

"What I love about this book is that he’s just a normal guy, living a normal life who gets swept into a prisoner of war camp. The scale of World War II is just incredible, it pretty much swept up everybody. In the camp, it’s incredibly boring. They’re Italian, just chilling out without their daily espressos and not bothering to escape, like Brits were supposed to do. Even if they could escape they’re 6,000 miles from Italy, so it’s impossible. They’re just bored out of their brains, and to make matters either better or worse, out in the distance, beyond the barbed wire, is this beautiful skyline with Mount Kenya. Benuzzi was trapped in a prison and out there was this big mountain, this symbol of adventure and freedom. He was quite a good climber so just for fun, really, and to idly pass the time, he started daydreaming about breaking out of prison to climb the mountain. It just drove him mad until eventually he did it: escaped, climbed the mountain and then, because they were Italian and not that keen on anything else, they broke back into the prison camp, apologized for escaping, and sat out the rest of the war. One of the fun parts of the book is that it goes against the modern cult of feeling you need to spend $500 on a raincoat to walk your dog. They had to get all the gear they needed to climb a pretty difficult mountain out of what they could beg, borrow, steal and make in the prison camp. So they made crampons out of barbed wire. They made ice axes out of hammers they stole. They had to hoard tiny bits of food to make supplementary rations—and they were underfed prisoners in the first place. That’s one of the joys of the book: working out how you cobble together the equipment you need in secret, without getting caught, before even breaking out of the camp. And yes, the mountain is quite hard. It’s high and it’s cold. So they had to make all the gear, escape from prison, trek through the lowlands—through the dangerous wild animals of Africa—and then climb a pretty serious technical mountain, all while malnourished. It’s pretty treacherous climbing and they failed. They didn’t actually get to the top of the top. There are a few different peaks and they got to a lower down one. But the climbing part isn’t really what this book is about. It’s about the human spirit and the lust and quest for adventure and the feeling that freedom and adventure can overcome anything, even being in prison. I really enjoy it now because so many of us in modern life like to moan that we can’t have adventures because…and then you insert an excuse: lack of time, lack of money, I haven’t got an expensive raincoat, whatever. I love the fact that they didn’t let anything stand in their way. I also enjoy the fact that when they break back into prison at the end, although they’ve committed a serious offence by escaping, the British officer just gives them a very short spell in solitary confinement because he’s proud of their ‘sporting effort.’"