South: The Endurance Expedition

Veteran explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's excruciating and inspiring expedition to Antarctica aboard the Endurance has long captured the public imagination. South is his own first-hand account of this epic adventure.

As war clouds darkened over Europe in 1914, a party led by Shackleton set out to make the first crossing of the entire Antarctic continent via the Pole. But their initial optimism was short-lived as ice floes closed around their ship, gradually crushing it and marooning twenty-eight men on the polar ice. Alone in the world's most unforgiving environment, Shackleton and his team began a brutal quest for survival. And as the story of their journey across treacherous seas and a wilderness of glaciers and snow fields unfolds, the scale of their courage and heroism becomes movingly clear.First time published as a Penguin ClassicIncludes a selection of Frank Hurley's famous photographsFeatures a new Introduction by Fergus Fleming

“Best read in the course of a single stormy night... you will be gripped.”

"Best read in the course of a single stormy night . . . you will be gripped." "" ("The New Yorker") ("The New Yorker") aa ("The New Yorker") ?? ("The New Yorker")

Sir Ernest Shackleton, who was born in Ireland, became one of the great explorers of his day, itself a golden age for British Exploration. He was a member of Robert Falcom Scott's Antarctic expedition of 1901-04, and in 1907-9 he commanded an expedition that came within a hundred miles of the South Pole (first reached by Amundsen in 1911), located near the magnetic pole, and climbed Mount Erebus. His attempt in 1914-16 to cross the Antarctic is described in this book. He died on board the Quest, on his fourth exhibition to the area in 1922.

Peter King has edited a number of travel books, principally those of George Nathaniel Curzon, whose writing included the classic Persia. Together with Maria Aitken, he has also written about Lady Travellers. His biographies include a study of Curzon and Kitchener in India.

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