What an extraordinary individual Jeffrey Archer is. For all his misdemeanours, indiscretions and worse, there is still a part of him filled with nostalgia for a Britain of the good old days, where men were men and women wept and waited for them.

Archer knows, of course, that the old-school-tie world of Empire and glorious manly achievement against the odds was flawed by bias, bigotry and humbug; his heroes are the valiant chaps who persevered despite it all and won out, or died in the effort.

Paths of Glory is - or at least purports to be - a semi-historical novel, the story of George Mallory, who may or may not have been the first man to climb Mount Everest. Officially the 1924 expedition, Mallory's second attempt on the world's highest mountain, was abandoned after he and Sandy Irvine failed to return from their attempt to reach the summit. But was it possible that they died on the way back rather than the way up?

Archer has produced an engaging biopic in words, from the infant Mallory dangerously but deftly skipping over rocks on a seaside holiday to dark experiences in the trenches of the First World War and two vividly imagined trips to the mountains of Tibet. En route we share Mallory's boyish enthusiasms and rivalries with fellow climbers, notably the brash but capable Australian George Finch, an advocate of modern climbing methods, including the use of oxygen. According to Archer, Finch was denied the right to join the 1924 expedition because his educational and social qualifications were not considered up to par for an English gentleman amateur. Archer may well be right; he knows a thing or two about social exclusion.

He does not attempt to make this a thriller in his usual mould -- there are no twists or turns in the tale - and Mallory's end is known from the outset, with an account of the 1999 Everest mission that located his body. Rather, Archer has given us a well-told biographical - almost hagiographical - adventure story steeped in a nostalgia of Bovril, Hunter watches, even early Woolworths, where a man says things to his wife such as: “You cheeky little minx. I don't know whether to spank you or kiss you.” Definitely a world that Archer feels he would have belonged to.

Paths of Glory is colourful and dramatic and reads like a ready-made film script, right down to the moving memorial service in Westminster Abbey featuring a tragic widow and the surviving cast of heroes and villains.

And maybe the movie will end up being made: there is an easy appeal in the mix of period costume drama and Himalayan adventure epic. But then cinema can cope with the two-dimensional far better than an intelligent reader who expects at least a little depth of character.

This is a world in which nobody ever fabricates their own university history, uses bad language, indulges in insider dealing or is jailed for perjury. In short, this is a world that shows Archer at the peak of his imaginative powers.

And if his publishers cite any sentence from this review on the dust jacket, you can bet that it will be that last one.

Peter Millar's All Gone to Look for America - a journey through the US by train - is published by Arcadia

Paths to Glory by Jeffrey Archer
Macmillan, £18.99 Buy the book

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