The Worst Journey In The World

'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised... ' wrote Apsley Cherry-Garrard in a deceptively jaunty introduction to this classic story of bravery and fortitude. The story he relates is of Scott's last expedition to the Antarctic, from its departure from England in 1910 to its arrival in New Zealand in 1913; it is one of the most famous and tragic in the annals of exploration. Cherry-Garrard was himself a member of the expedition, which had two goals; to discover as much as possible about the terrain and habitat of Antarctica and to be the first to reach the South Pole. The party was plagued by bad luck, weather conditions of unanticipated ferocity and their own physical deterioration. Then, confronted by the shattering knowledge that Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole a month before them, Scott's party had to negotiate the last, heroic part of their journey, a doomed attempt that has entered modern mythology. The Worst Journey in the World is the inside story of this most famous of journeys and is truly one of the best and most moving books of travel ever written.