The Worst Journey in the World

The Worst Journey in the World has been an aknowledged masterpiece of travel writing and one of the most celebrated and compelling of all books on Antarctic exploration, ever since it’s initial publication in 1922. In his introduction to this harrowing story of the 1912 Scott expedition to the South Pole, Apsley Cherry-Gerrard states: ‘Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.’ This book is his account of an expedition which went disastrously wrong. One of the youngest members of Scott’s team, the author was later part of the rescue party that eventually found the frozen bodies of Scott and the three men who had accompanied him on the final push to the Pole. Despite the horrors Scott and his men eventually faced, Cherry-Garrard’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. Truly, this book will leave an impression as indelible as the vast empty landscape of the Antarctic has on many an explorer.