The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford

Though this was the age of the amateur explorer, Amundsen was a professional: he left little to chance, apprenticed with Eskimos and obsessed over every detail. It is also biographer Ronald Huntford's rather heavy-handed attempt to restore Amundsen to glory. Last Place On Earth is a complex and fascinating account of the race for this last great terrestrial goal. to glorify suffering and self- sacrifice as ends in themselves.' His achievement was to perpetuate the romantic myth of the explorer as martyr, and. But it was Scott, ironically, who became the legend, Britain's heroic failure, 'a monument to sheer ambition and bull-headed persistence. His competitor for the prize, Britain's Robert Scott, arrived one month later-but died on the return with four of his men only 11 miles from their next cache of supplies.

On December 14, 1911, the classical age of Polar exploration ended when Norway's Roald Amundsen conquered the South Pole. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. It is also the only work on the subject in the English language based on the original Norwegian sources, to which Huntford returned to revise and update this edition. THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is the first of Huntford's masterly trilogy of polar biographies. This account of their race is a gripping, highly readable history that captures the driving ambitions of the era and the complex, often deeply flawed men who were charged with carrying them out.

Scott, who dies along with four of his men only eleven miles from his next cache of supplies, became Britain's beloved failure, while Amundsen, who not only beat Scott to the Pole but returned alive, was largely forgotten. In the brilliant dual biography, the award-winning writer Roland Huntford re-examines every detail of the great race to the South Pole between Britain's Robert Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the fiercely nationalistic modern age of exploration.

The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford