A climbers' guru par excellence of the interwar years, Winthrop Young was also an educationalist who helped Kurt Hahn found the Outward Bound movement, and was closely involved with German attempts to oust Hitler. He was a patriot and a dedicated European, a homosexual and a devoted family man, and lived his life among politicians and leaders like Theodore Roosevelt, Churchill, Baden-Powell and the Kaiser. This biography, which uses freely Winthrop Young's unpublished diaries and letters, attempts to unravel the complexities of this many-sided man.