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Synopsis
In November 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton watched horrified as the grinding floes of the Weddell Sea squeezed the life from his ship, Endurance, before letting her slip silently down to her last resting place. Caught in the chaos of splintered wood, buckled metalwork and tangled rigging lay Shackleton’s dream of being the first man to complete the crossing of Antarctica. Shackleton would not live to make a second attempt – but his dream lived on.
Shackleton’s Dream tells for the first time the story of the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Everest. Forty years after the loss of Endurance, they set out to succeed where Shackleton had so heroically failed. Using motor-sledges and converted farm tractors in place of Shackleton’s man-hauled sledges, they faced a colossal challenge: a perilous 2,000-mile journey across the most demanding landscape on the the planet, where temperatures can plunge to a staggering -129°F and bitter katabatic winds rush down from the high Polar Plateau carrying dense clouds of drift snow, which blind and disorientate.
This epic adventure saw two giants of twentieth century exploration pitted not only against Nature at her most hostile, but also against each other. From their coastal bases on opposite sides of Antarctica, the two leaders pushed south relentlessly, dodging bottomless crevasses and traversing vast, unexplored tracts of wind-sculpted ice. Planned as an historic (and scientific) continental crossing, the expedition would eventually develop into a dramatic ‘Race to the South Pole’ – a contest as controversial as that of Scott and Amundsen more than four decades earlier.
'Haddelsey’s Shackleton’s Dream is a timely and compelling study of the TAE. It should go a very long way to redress the balance. Unless new material comes to light in future years, this fine book will surely remain a definitive work. Without question, the Bunny Fuchs’s astonishing expedition deserves such a book as this.'Stephen Scott-Fawcett
Review will be in the Journal of the James Caird Society (the premier Shackleton society) in March 2012
"You will not find a more distinguished or eclectic programme at any other festival in the country” Roy Hattersley, 2010
“A jewel of a literature festival” Melvyn Bragg
‘Extraordinary. A story that will prove to anyone who doubts it, that courage, determination, danger and disaster remain as much a part of Antarctic exploration in the Modern Age as in the Heroic Era.’
SIR RANULPH FIENNES
‘Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, Shackleton's Dream tells the in-depth story of the first crossing of the Antarctic continent, an expedition with more than its fair share of adventure, rivalry, ego, and controversy. Following in the footsteps of his biographies of Frank Bickerton and J.R. Stenhouse, this book further establishes Stephen Haddelsey as a key historian of Antarctic exploration.’
BEAU RIFFENBURG, AUTHOR OF NIMROD AND RACING WITH DEATH
‘The story of the most daring British polar expedition since Shackleton's and an important link between the heroic and modern eras of Antarctic exploration.’
NICHOLAS OWENS, DIRECTOR OF THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC SURVEY
‘A superbly readable and well researched book on the trials and tribulations of the first successful crossing of Antarctica.’
KEN BLAIKLOCK, SURVEYOR AND DOG HANDLER
ON THE COMMONWEALTH TRANS-ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION
‘The first crossing of the Antarctic continent remains a benchmark in the exploration of our planet. Haddelsey’s book provides an important insight into the achievements of Fuchs, Hillary and their companions’
JULIAN DOWDESWELL, DIRECTOR OF THE SCOTT POLAR RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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