EXCERPT Captain John Noel’s 1919 presentation to the Royal Geographic Society, recounting his 1913 solo incursion into Tibet, was decisive in securing the British imperial establishment’s backing for the initial assaults on Everest of the early 1920s. These were framed as a last attempt to resurrect the European dreams of mastery, sunk in the ‘Aceldama’ (Acts 1:19, ‘the field of blood’) of Flanders…