Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls (; born 7 June 1974) is a British adventurer, television presenter and former SAS trooper. He holds several world records in hostile environments, and appeared in numerous wilderness survival television series including Man vs. Wild (2006–2011), Running Wild with Bear Grylls (2014–2023) and The Island with Bear Grylls (2014–2019).
In July 2009, Grylls was appointed as The Scout Association's youngest-ever Chief Scout of the United Kingdom and Overseas Territories at the age of 35. He held the post until September 2024, becoming the second-longest-serving Chief Scout after Robert Baden-Powell.
Early life Grylls was born in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland, on 7 June 1974. He is the son of Conservative politician Sir Michael Grylls and his wife Sarah "Sally" (née Ford). Her mother Patricia (née Smiles), was briefly an MP, succeeding her father; later she married an MP."Obituary: Sir Michael Grylls" , Telegraph.co.uk, 13 February 2001. Grylls has one sibling, an elder sister, Lara Fawcett, who gave him the nickname "Bear" when he was a week old. His family has a strong cricketing background, his grandfather Neville Ford and great-great-grandfather William Augustus Ford having both been first-class cricketers.
He lived in Donaghadee until the age of four, when his family moved to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight."My Life In Travel: Bear Grylls", Independent.co.uk, 17 April 2004. From an early age, he learned to climb and sail with his father, who was a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron. As a teenager, he learned to skydive and earned a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate. He speaks English, Spanish, German and French."Ask Bear Your Questions" , BearGrylls.com; accessed 3 August 2015. He is an Anglican, and has described his Christian faith as the "backbone" in his life: "You can't keep God out. He's all around us, if we're just still enough to listen."
Education Grylls was educated at Eaton House, Ludgrove School and Eton College, where he helped start its first mountaineering club. He studied Spanish and German at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and at Birkbeck College, where he graduated with a 2:2 bachelor's degree, obtained part-time, in Hispanic studies in 2002.
Military service
After leaving school, Grylls hiked in the Himalayan mountains of Sikkim and West Bengal. From 1994 to 1997, he served in the Territorial Army with 21 SAS as a trooper. His time in the SAS ended as the result of a free fall parachuting accident in Zambia in 1996;Bear Grylls at sasspecialairservice.com his parachute failed to open, causing him to break three vertebrae. At , his fall is one of the highest falls survived without a parachute.
In 2004, Grylls was awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. Then in 2013 he was awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel in the Royal Marines Reserve, and promoted to honorary colonel in June 2021. In April 2024, Grylls was appointed honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College, serving as a figurehead for the college, a role once held by Captain Tom Moore. As such, he was granted a commission in the British Army as a local colonel for the duration of the appointment.
Expeditions
Everest On 16 May 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream of climbing to the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal, 18 months after breaking three vertebrae in a parachuting accident. At 23, he was at the time among the youngest people to have achieved this feat. There is some dispute over whether he was the youngest Briton to have done so, as he was preceded by James Allen, a climber holding dual Australian and British citizenship, who reached the summit in 1995 at age 22.Summit Magazine No. 40, Winter 2005, page 12 The record has since been surpassed by Jake Meyer and then Rob Gauntlett who summitted at age 19. To prepare for climbing at such high altitudes in the Himalayas, in 1997, Grylls became the youngest Briton to climb Ama Dablam, a peak once described by Sir Edmund Hillary as "unclimbable", although now the third most popular in the Himalayas for permitted expeditions.
Circumnavigation of the UK In 2000, Grylls led the team to circumnavigate the British Isles on jet skis, taking about 30 days, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). He also rowed naked in a homemade bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident.
Crossing the North Atlantic In 2003, he led a team of five, including his childhood friend, SAS colleague, and Mount Everest climbing partner Mick Crosthwaite, on an unassisted crossing of the north Atlantic Ocean, in an open rigid inflatable boat. Grylls and his team travelled in an eleven-metre-long boat and encountered force 8 gale winds with waves breaking over the boat while passing through icebergs in their journey from Halifax, Nova Scotia to John o' Groats, Scotland.
Dinner party at altitude In 2005, alongside the balloonist and mountaineer David Hempleman-Adams and Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, leader of the Royal Navy Freefall Parachute Display Team, Grylls created a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party, which they did under a hot-air balloon at , dressed in full mess dress and oxygen masks. To train for the event, he made over 200 parachute jumps. This event was in aid of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award and the King's Trust.
Paramotoring over the Himalayas In 2007, Grylls embarked on a record-setting Parajet paramotor in Himalayas near Mount Everest. He took off from , south of the mountain. Grylls reported looking down on the summit during his ascent and coping with temperatures of . He endured dangerously low oxygen levels and eventually reached , almost higher than the previous record of . The feat was filmed for Discovery Channel worldwide as well as Channel 4 in the UK.Grylls, Bear, "Flying Into A Dream", Telegraph.co.uk; 19 May 2007 While Grylls initially planned to cross over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly to the south of Everest, and he did not traverse Everest out of risk of violating Chinese airspace.Martin, Nicole, "Explorer hits heights with Himalayan record", Telegraph.co.uk, 16 May 2007.
Journey Antarctica 2008 In 2008, Grylls led a team of four to climb one of the most remote unclimbed peaks in the world in Antarctica, to raise funds for children's charity Global Angels and promote the use of alternative energies. During this mission the team also aimed to explore the coast of Antarctica by inflatable boat and jetski, part powered by bioethanol, and then to travel across some of the vast ice desert by wind-powered kite-ski and electric powered paramotor. However, the expedition was cut short after Grylls suffered a broken shoulder while kite skiing across a stretch of ice. Travelling at speeds up to 50 km/h (30 mph), a ski caught on the ice, launching him in the air and breaking his shoulder when he came down. He had to be medically evacuated."Diary: From Bear" , journeyAntarctica2008.com, 6 December 2008.
Longest indoor freefall Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record in 2008 for the longest continuous indoor freefall. The previous record was 1 hour 36 minutes by a US team. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in Milton Keynes, broke the record by a few seconds. The attempt was in support of the charity Global Angels.
Northwest Passage expedition In September 2010, Grylls led a team of five to take an ice-breaking rigid-inflatable boat (RIB) through of the ice-strewn Northwest Passage. The expedition intended to raise awareness of the effects of global warming and to raise money for children's charity Global Angels.
Career Books Grylls's first book, Facing Up (UK)/The Kid Who Climbed Everest (US), described his expedition and achievements climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. His second was Facing the Frozen Ocean. His third book Born Survivor: Bear Grylls was written to accompany the TV series of the same name. He also wrote an extreme guide to outdoor pursuits, titled Bear Grylls Outdoor Adventures.
In 2011, Grylls released his autobiography, Mud, Sweat and Tears: The Autobiography, followed by A Survival Guide for Life in late 2012 and True Grit in 2013.
Grylls also wrote the Mission Survival series of children's adventure survival books titled: Mission Survival: Gold of the Gods, Mission Survival: Way of the Wolf, Mission Survival: Sands of the Scorpion, Mission Survival: Tracks of the Tiger and Mission Survival: Claws of the Crocodile. He has written two thriller novels based around his character Will Jaeger; Ghost Flight released in 2015 and Burning Angels in 2016.
In 2019, Grylls published a Christian devotional titled Soul Fuel.
In October 2021, Grylls released his second autobiography, Never Give Up; covering some of his most memorable events and adventures.
In 2022, Grylls published Mind Fuel: Simple Ways to Build Mental Resilience Every Day. Grylls told The Christian Post that it "offers honest and practical ways to practice better mental health... a crucial part of living a healthy, God-glorying life."
In April 2023, Grylls released You Vs the World: The Bear Grylls Guide to Never Giving Up; a motivational book aimed at children.
In September 2023, How to be a Scout, was released by Grylls.
In June 2025, Grylls released The Greatest Story Ever Told: An Eyewitness Account, a retelling of the story of Jesus told from five different first-person perspectives. The book became No.1 on Sunday Times Bestseller list in the UK.
Television
Grylls was used by the UK Ministry of Defence to head the Army's anti-drugs TV campaign, and featured in the first ever major advertising campaign for Harrods. Grylls has been a guest on numerous talk shows including Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Attack of the Show!, Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Harry Hill's TV Burp. Grylls recorded two advertisements for Post's Trail Mix Crunch Cereal, which aired in the US from January 2009. He also appeared as a "distinguished instructor" in Dos Equis' Most Interesting Academy in a webisode named "Survival in the Modern Era". He appeared in a five-part web series that demonstrates urban survival techniques and features Grylls going from bush to bash. He also has marketed the Alpha Course, a course on the basics of the Christian faith. In 2013, Grylls appeared in an airline safety video for Air New Zealand entitled Bear Essentials of Safety, filmed against the backdrop of the Routeburn Track on the southern tip of New Zealand's South Island. In 2014, Grylls appeared on Piers Morgan's Life Stories.
Escape to the Legion Grylls filmed a four-part TV show in 2005, called Escape to the Legion, which followed Grylls and eleven other "recruits" as they took part in a shortened re-creation of the French Foreign Legion's basic desert training in the Sahara. The show was first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4,"Escape to the Legion" Channel4.com and in the US on the Military Channel.
Born Survivor/Man vs. Wild
Grylls hosts a series titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as Man vs. Wild in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and the United States, and as Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. Man vs. Wild debuted in 2006, and its success led it to lasting seven seasons over five years.