Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Having coming across Apsley Cherry-Garrard's picture pretty much by chance as a mental image for Arctic Raoul (interestingly, apparently he was actually dark-haired; the fair/white beard in the photo was an unexpected side-effect of the extreme cold), I then stumbled across a discarded copy of his autobiographical account of the Antarctic, "The Worst Journey in the World". It's a massive tome about seven hundred pages long (counting a hundred pages or so of historical introduction by both the author and the editor)... and it turns out to be absolutely fascinating.

'Cherry' was intelligent and observant, sometimes palpably schoolboyish and sometimes painfully mature, he had access to all the archive material and personal diaries from the expedition records (he was supposed to be writing up the official report, before he decided he couldn't produce the sort of detached dry document they wanted), and he couldn't half *write*. ( Read more... )

( Tealin )