Intrepid Magdalene
From the missionary, Robert Keable, and George Mallory, the Himalayan climber who died in 1924 in what may have been the first successful assault on Everest (30 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Norgay 'Sherpa' Tenzing), to John Simpson, the BBC's foreign editor who famously 'liberated Kabul' in 2001, Magdalene has a fine tradition of breeding intrepid travellers. The next generation of explorers is encouraged by the provision of travel grants and, in several subjects, opportunities to do fieldwork outside the UK. Every year, Magdalene students undertake projects worthy of their predecessor, the nineteenth-century traveller, Harry de Windt, who made the journey from Paris to New York via Siberia, the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.
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When the Clouds lift, rugged peaks are seen to trust scarred heads above, all of them unconquered; and whether they lift or not, the slopes are broken with great gashes as if some giant hand has torn down the mountain side with immense, crooked fingers.
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Robert Keable, Tahiti
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