A Short History of Polar Exploration

According to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, 'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised. ' Despite this there has never been a shortage of volunteers willing to endure the bad times in pursuit of the glory that polar exploration sometimes brings. Nick Rennison's compelling book tells the memorable stories of the men and women who have risked their lives by entering the white wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic, from the compelling tales of Scott, Shacklet on and Amundsen, to lesser known heroes such as Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary. A Short History of Polar Exploration also looks at the hold that the polar regions have often had on the imaginations of artists and writers in the last two hundred years examining the pain tings, films and literature that they have inspired.

Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in the Victorian era and in crime fiction. He has written several Pocket Essential guides published by Oldcastle Books including A Short History of the Polar Exploration, Roget, Freud and Robin Hood. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His debut crime novel, Carver’s Quest, is set in nineteenth century England and published by Atlantic Books. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and BBC History Magazine and is an editorial consultant to Gaslight Crime and Mystery.