Few events contain all the right ingredients to cause the press to fly halfway around the world, set up camp and splash the story on front pages for nearly a month.
Descent Into Chaos is an account of such an episode, one with all the elements of a Boy's Own adventure: unexplored wilderness, uncertainty over life and death, and heroic survival.
In March 1994, seven British and three Hong Kong soldiers embarked on an adventure training exercise in Sabah, the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo. Their aim was to be the first to conquer Low's Gully, a treacherous chasm cut into Southeast Asia's highest peak, Mount Kinabalu.
Two older British army officers, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Neill and Major Ronald Foster, led a makeshift team on what was trumpeted as an exercise in leadership, training and morale.
In fact it was an ill-planned, hastily-arranged and badly-prepared expedition which contained the hallmarks of disaster from the outset.
Squabbles and differences led to the team splitting into two even before the descent began. The officers and the Chinese soldiers - the latter, by their own admission, were never up to the task - and equipment, rations and timing of the expedition were all open to criticism.