Pages: 168

Dimensions: 170 x 245 mm

Publication Date: 01-11-2010

In 1897 Roald Amundsen, the future conqueror of the South Pole, set sail as second officer on board the Belgica, as part of a multi-national crew. This was the first Antarctic expedition of a purely scientific nature and it was this expedition that fired him with his ambition to explore the Polar Regions. The explorers did not reach the pole but they were the first people to spend a winter in the Antarctic pack ice. This is the first publication of Amundsen's diary. The original manuscript, in the University of Oslo, has only been consulted by historians and biographers on a few occasions. As primarily a personal diary, it provides fascinating insights into the struggle for survival on the ice during the Antarctic winter and into the pressures in being part of a multi-national crew.

Pages: 208

Publication Date: 01-09-1999

For little more than 100 years the Arctic and Antarctic have inspired some of the greatest stories ever told. The exploits of Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and many, many others have inspired and awed millions of people over the years. Ice Tracks brings together for the first time the accounts of eighteen of our greatest present day Polar explorers — Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Robert Swan, Rosie Stancer and Ann Daniels, Matty McNair and Dr Viktor Boyarsky — English, Russian, Swedish, Canadian — they all share a love of the extreme. Their expeditions across the two Poles have demanded extraordinary bravery, unimaginable privation and sometimes a little luck. Ice Tracks, with its superb photographs, leaves no iceberg unturned to lay bare today’s Polar world.

Pages: 160

Dimensions: 170 x 245 mm

Publication Date: 01-11-2008

Ernest Shackleton was obsessed by the Antarctic. He wanted to be first to the South Pole, partly for the glory but also because he felt he had to redeem himself after Scott sent him back on the relief ship in 1903, because of his “ill health”. Here, gathered together for the first time, are 156 letters and telegrams exploring the inner thoughts of an heroic man with far-reaching dreams. The author details the history leading up to the expedition, through the trials of the year on the ice and the various journeys and then the return to England and the reception they received from the public, the press and such as the Royal Geographic Society.

Pages: 368

Dimensions: 165 x 235 mm

Publication Date: 01-06-2010

Once the pole had been conquered by Amundsen and Scott the next great journey was the crossing of the Antarctic continent, first attempted by Filchner in 1912 and then by Shackleton in 1914. As part of the International Geographical Year the Trans-Antarctic Expedition was set up with Vivian Fuchs in charge. He would start from a base on the Weddell Sea and after reaching the Pole, continue to the Ross Sea using supply depots laid by a New Zealand team working from McMurdo and led by the conqueror of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary. In January 1956 an advance party of eight men was left at Shackleton base to build accommodation, explore and lay depots to ease the passage of Fuchss team the following year. The achievement of this expedition still resonates today but the near-death experience of the Advance Party at Shackleton Base has been largely forgotten. The eight men left behind only just survived in a dreadful Antarctic winter, living by day in a sno-cat crate and sleeping in tents at night while trying to erect a poorly designed hut with inadequate manpower and equipment. The loss of much of their stores put their survival on a knife-edge. This account, based on the diary of the young medical officer, shows how close to disaster they came and how lucky they were to survive. Fuchs later admitted that apart from Scotts marooned Northern Party theirs was the most severe ordeal in the history of Antarctic exploration.

Publication Date: 01-02-2012