Shackleton

The enthralling life, endurance and incredible leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleton, told by the world's greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

To write about Hell, it helps if you have been there.

In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. What followed became legend.

Throughout the long, dark Antarctic winter, Shackleton fights for his life and the lives of his men - enduring freezing temperatures, a perilous lifeboat journey through the ice-strewn sea, and a punishing march across the South Georgia glaciers to seek the one slim chance they have of rescue. Their situation is disastrous.

Their survival would become history's most enthralling adventure. Yet Shackleton's critics have argued that the expedition was always doomed to fail. And that had Endurance not been destroyed by ice, his men would have suffered a slow and horrible death before completing their journey.

No previous biographer has experienced even a tiny taste of the polar hell on earth endured by Shackleton and his men. That cannot be said of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who has been described as 'our greatest living explorer'. From Shackleton's pursuit of adventure as a young merchant seaman, through his rivalry with Captain Scott, culminating in the two remarkable expeditions to Antarctica that revealed his unrivalled leadership and personal courage under the most extreme of circumstances, Fiennes brings the story vividly and viscerally to life, his own near-death on the ice, fifty years after his subject's death, providing the necessary proof to silence Shackleton's critics once and for all.

About the Author

Ranulph Fiennes is the only man alive ever to have travelled around the Earth's circumpolar surface (more people have been on the Moon!). His record-breaking expeditions include travel by riverboat, hovercraft, man-haul sledge, skidoo, Land Rover and skis. He is also the bestselling author of titles such as Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, and the biography Captain Scott.