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Why we never tire of tales of pointless polar hardship

Out in the middle of nowhere, our heroes and anti-heroes are stripped down to essentials and the quest for knowledge becomes a quest for self-knowledge and human improvement

19 April 2025

9:00 AM

19 April 2025

9:00 AM

The North Pole: The History of an Obsession Erling Kagge, translated by Kari Dickson

Viking, pp.432, 22

Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos and Our Future Neil Shubin

Oneworld, pp.288, 22

I’m not altogether a fan of what the writer Sara Wheeler has called the Big Willie school of expeditions. ‘To me,’ I once intoned loftily, ‘exploration is not about conquering nature or planting flags or going where no one’s gone before in order to make a mark. Rather the opposite.’

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