Volume 27, Number 12 · July 17, 1980
Excelsior!
By Gwyn Jones
Scott and Amundsen
by Roland Huntford
Putnam's, 665 pp., $19.95
Roland Huntford has written a book which is at once exciting and sobering, heartening yet troubling. It is exciting to read of two famous marches across Antarctica to the South Pole, sobering to mark the difference between success and failure. It is heartening to rediscover the bravery and resourcefulness of human beings, and troubling to see a long-admired hero tumbled from his pedestal, a long-admired reputation re-examined and diminished. The marches to the Pole are those made by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and the British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott in 1911-1912, the one a curiously muted triumph, the other the most belaureled disaster in the annals of polar exploration. The reputation is that of Scott, in British eyes the very beau idéal of a nation's heroism, the apotheosis of English pluck and sporting spirit, make-do and the close-run thing. 'By gad, sir, I've lost my leg!' 'By gad, sir, so you have!' Only this time it was a life—five lives—with a public acclaim commensurate to the loss.
Review, 2723 words
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