A new study of Captain Scott is reviewed in the NY Times. "Perhaps the most balanced biography yet," says Jonathan Dore, who also writes for the Arctic Book Review. He’s not so keen on explorer Ranulph Fiennes’s 2004 book on Scott, a work "ultimately based on the idea that his own experience as a polar explorer made him almost the only person who could write authoritatively on the subject." I read that book recently, and enjoyed it immensely. Dore knows a thousand times more about the subject than I do, yet that wasn’t how Fiennes came across to me. I thought he was simply intent on making the point that fighting your way to the poles, and almost dying in the process, gives you an insight into the practicalities that you can’t get from researching in a library.
A lot of his energy was devoted to countering Ronald Huntford’s critique of the Englishman in Scott and Amundsen (also known as The Last Place on Earth). According to Fiennes, Huntford's debunking view made an even bigger splash thanks to a TV dramatisation by Trevor Griffiths who, being a good Marxist. was attracted to the story's parallel with the "imperialist" Falklands war.
A small example of Peter Whittle’s thesis in action?
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