The Worst Journey in the World (Vintage Classics)

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Perhaps the greatest first-hand account of polar exploration.In his introduction to the harrowing story of the Scott expedition to the South Pole, Apsley Cherry-Garrard states that x201C;Polar Exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.x201D; This is his gripping account of an expedition gone disastrously wrong.One of the youngest members of Scottx2019;s team, the author was later part of the rescue party that eventually found the frozen bodies of Scott and three men who had accompanied him on the final push to the Pole. Prior to this sad denouement, Cherry-Garrardx2019;s account is filled with details of scientific discovery and anecdotes of human resilience in a harsh environment, supported by diary excerpts and accounts from other explorers.Summing up the reasons for writing the book, Cherry-Garrard says:x201C;To me, and perhaps to you, the interest in this story is the men, and it is the spirit of the men, x201C;the response of the spirit,x201D; which is interesting rather than what they did or failed to do: except in a superficial sense, they never failedx2026; It is a story about human minds with all kinds of ideas and questions involved, which stretch beyond the furthest horizons.x201D;

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APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD (1886-1959) was one of the youngest members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic which he joined to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. After the expedition, Cherry-Garrard served in the First World War and was invalided home. With the zealous encouragement of his neighbour, George Bernard Shaw, Cherry-Garrard wrote The Worst Journey in the World (1922) in an attempt to overcome the horror of the journey. As the years unravelled he faced a terrible struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his companions.