|
|
||||
|
Julie Summers - Author, historian and lecturer
Julie now classifies herself as an author who writes about people who get themselves into – and for the most part out of – life and death situations. This is the link between her subjects: Irvine who climbed with Mallory on Everest in 1924; Sir Ernest Shackleton whose four extraordinary expeditions to the Antarctic at the beginning of the last century enthralled then, and still continue to fascinate the public; Sir Philip Toosey, the colonel who built the real bridge over the River Kwai and on whom Alec Guinness’s screen character is loosely based and her future ‘hero’, Friedrich-Adolf von der Decken, a sixteen year old boy who stood up to the Nazis in 1943 and lived to tell the tale. Julie has made regular appearances on radio and is a discussion panellist for BBC Wales. She recently appeared on Battle of the Books defending Heinrich Harrer’s The White Spider against Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void and was much praised for an audience with the crime-writer PD James in early 2005. Her first biography Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine appeared to great critical acclaim in November 2000. Two years later Weidenfeld & Nicolson commissioned The Shackleton Voyages: A Pictorial Anthology of the Edwardian Hero and Polar Explorer. This was followed in September 2005 by The Colonel of Tamarkan, Philip Toosey and the Bridge on the River Kwai in which Julie explores the true story of the man behind the legend. It has recently been described as an ‘outstanding biography’ and by one former prisoner of war as the best book ever written on the Thailand Burma railway. TalksJulie has talked to a wide range of audiences including societies, lecture associations, the business community, schools, the general public and at art, literature and film festivals. All her talks are beautifully illustrated. The Colonel of Tamarkan: Novel, Film, RealityEveryone is familiar with the film The Bridge over the River Kwai, but what is the historical reality of the building of the bridge in 1942-3? Author and historian Julie Summers will look at the personality of Colonel Nicholson, played in an Oscar winning performance by Alec Guinness, and that of Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey, whose Oscar winning performances went unnoticed by the outside world although they were widely admired by the men in his prison camps. Did the prisoners actually whistle the Colonel Bogey tune? Did they help or hinder the Japanese when designing and building the bridge? How many bridges are there on the River Kwai? This fascinating talk will reveal that the true story is far more dramatic, more exciting and indeed more tragic than the film. Stunning photographs and excerpts from Toosey's own autobiographical tapes add to this extraordinary story. The Shackleton VoyagesIn 1914, with bravery matched only by his theatricality, Shackleton planned to cross the great Antarctic continent by sledge. What began as a great exploratory journey turned into a raw struggle for survival. When his ship became trapped in pack ice, he was forced to lead his team on a desperate trek across hundreds of miles of ice and make an 800-mile open boat journey across the heaviest seas in the world to find help to rescue every one of his men. A truly epic story, which reveals as much about the times as it does about the ‘greatest leader on earth’, Shackleton himself. Sandy Irvine: A Splendid Experiment.At just twenty-two, Sandy Irvine, the youngest member of the 1924 Everest expedition, packed into his life what many would consider would fill two lifetimes. In the year before his death he rowed in the winning Oxford boat, crossed the Arctic island of Spitsbergen by sledge, invented an oxygen system for the Everest expedition and then climbed with Mallory towards the summit of Everest. They were last seen ‘going strong for the top’ on 8th June 1924. Julie examines the brief but exciting life of Sandy Irvine, who so impressed his Everest expedition leader, General Bruce, that he described Sandy in a dispatch in The Times as ‘our splendid experiment’.
|
 |
After a successful career in the art world, Julie decided to fulfil her earliest ambition, which was to become a full time author. Her earlier profession might have paved the way for scholarly publications but Julie found it was the people rather than the art that fascinated her. As she moved away from fine art she began to discover in people’s lives captivating stories of bravery, determination, and humour that she wanted to tell.