Everest and the Dancing Lamas of Tibet

Mount Everest and the Dancing Lamas of Tibet

Join Sir Michael Palin, Brian Blessed OBE, Mick Conefrey, Professor Julie Brown and Evan Davis for this special talk at the Royal Geographical Society on Tuesday 11 June 2024.

Following the 1924 attempt on Everest which ended so tragically with the death of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine, Captain John Noel’s Explorer Films released ‘The Epic of Everest’ documenting both the climb and some of the earliest moving images from Tibet.

Between 1924 and 1925 Captain Noel presented the film across Europe with a group of Tibetan monks who performed a prologue to the screenings featuring masked dance and Tantric music. The visit of the Monks led to a controversy which became known as 'The Affair of the Dancing Lamas' and resulted in future British expeditions to Everest being refused for nearly a decade.

Illustrated with clips from John Noel’s films, Sir Michael Palin, Mick Conefrey (author of ‘Fallen’ a new book about the 1924 expedition), Professor Julie Brown and broadcaster Evan Davis discuss the background to this extraordinary period in climbing and cultural history.

SIR MICHAEL PALIN

Michael Palin has written and starred in numerous TV programmes and films, from Monty Python and Ripping Yarns to The Missionary and The Death of Stalin. He has also made several much-acclaimed travel documentaries, his journeys taking him to the North and South Poles, the Sahara Desert, the Himalayas, Eastern Europe and Brazil. His books include accounts of his journeys, novels (Hemingway’s Chair and The Truth) and several volumes of diaries. From 2009 to 2012 he was president of the Royal Geographical Society. He received a BAFTA fellowship in 2013, and a knighthood in the 2019 New Year Honours list. He lives in London.

BRIAN BLESSED OBE

Brian Blessed OBE was born in 1936 in South Yorkshire. From his small-screen debut in the BBC series Z Cars in the 1960s he has become one of Britain’s most familiar and best-loved actors.

Brian has performed on stage in every type of production from Shakespeare to Cats, while his big screen roles have included Robin Hood’s father, Lord Locksley in Prince of Thieves and Prince Voltan, warrior leader of the Hawkmen in the 1980’s cult classic Flash Gordon.

Away from acting he has become known as an adventurer and climber, scaling Mount Kilimanjaro, surviving a plane crash in the jungles of Venezuela and trekking to the north magnetic pole.

At the age of seven he read about George Mallory’s 1924 ascent of Everest in his Hotspur comic and this inspired a lifetime’s dream of recreating the historic climb. He met and became a close friend of Captain John Noel. He made three attempts to climb Everest, and although he never gained the summit, reached a height of 28,200 feet (8,600 m) without oxygen in 1993, earning the admiration of many fellow mountaineers.

MICK CONEFREY

Mick Conefrey is an award-winning writer and documentary maker. He made the landmark BBC series Mountain Men, Icemen and The Race for Everest to mark the 60th anniversary of the first ascent. His previous books include Everest 1922, Everest 1953, the winner of a LeggiMontagna award, The Last Great Mountain, the winner of the Premio Itas in 2023, and The Ghosts of K2, which won a US National Outdoor Book award.

His new book, Fallen: George Mallory: The Man, The Myth and the 1924 Everest Tragedy is published on May 2 by Allen & Unwin.

PROFESSOR JULIE BROWN

Julie Brown is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. She writes about silent film music and has recreated the contemporaneous music and scores for three silent films, including The Epic of Everest (as extras on the BFI DVD/BluRay) and Climbing Mount Everest. She is contributing co-editor of The Sounds of the Silents in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2013) and is currently writing a book on music and early ethnographic and travelogue films, featuring the Everest films.

EVAN DAVIS

Evan Davis is the presenter of PM, the news and current affairs programme that airs weekdays and Saturdays on Radio 4. Before taking up that role in November 2018, he was the main presenter of BBC2’s Newsnight (from July 2014). Before this he was a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (2008–2014). He is also well-known as the presenter of the BBC2 business reality show Dragons Den. And on Radio 4, he hosts a weekly business discussion programme the Bottom Line.

He has made several BBC documentaries, including the influential two-part BBC2 series Mind the Gap (2014) which explored the economic disparities between London and the regions. In 2011 he presented Made in Britain, a three-part BBC2 series with an accompanying book on how the country pays its way in the world.

Before joining the BBC in 1993, he was an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and at the London Business School. He has written numerous papers, articles and newspaper and magazine columns as well as the book, Public Spending, (published by Penguin in 1998). He is also a co-author of the Penguin Dictionary of Economics and the New Penguin Dictionary of Business.

His latest book is called Post Truth: Why we have reached Peak Bullshit and what we can do about it which sets out to explain why there is so much mendacity and nonsense in public discourse and why it became more of a concern in 2016.