Mike Banks (mountaineer)

Michael Edward Borg Banks MBE (22 December 1922 – 9 February 2013) was a British soldier, adventurer, climber and author.^[1]

Banks was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, on 22 December 1922.^[1] His father Humphrey Borg, an engineer, and mother Elsie (nee Millicent) worked in Malta, where Banks was schooled until returning to Chippenham when he was 14.^[1] He adopted the surname Banks by deed poll, in adulthood.^[1] Banks was a vegetarian.^[2]

Banks joined the Royal Marines, with a commission, in January 1942.^[1] He was a member of the British North Greenland Expedition (1952 to 1954).

He appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 25 November 1954.^[3] He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1959.^[1]

In 1958, he made the first ascent of Rakaposhi with Tom Patey as part of a British-Pakistani joint forces Himalayan expedition.^[4]

At the age of 77, in May 2000, he climbed the Scottish sea stack, the Old Man of Hoy becoming the oldest person to have done so.^[5]

He died in Bristol on 9 February 2013, aged 90.^[1]

• —— (1955). Commando climber. Dent.
• —— (1957). High Arctic: The story of the British North Greenland Expedition. Dent.
• —— (1957). High Arctic. Secker & Warburg.
• —— (1959). Rakaposhi. Secker & Warburg.
• —— (1961). Snow Commando. Burke.
• —— (1975). Greenland. David & Charles. ISBN 978-0715369111.
• —— (1979). Mountaineering for Beginners. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0340236956.