Deskbound Traveller

David Grann has turned his article for The New Yorker on the Antarctic journeys of Henry Worsley into a short (150-page) book. The White Darkness is due to be published in Britain on November 1 by Simon & Schuster.

The New Yorker has a tremendous piece from David Grann about Henry Worsley and his “compulsion to subject himself to suffering” in the Antarctic. Worsley died in 2016 after pulling out just 30 miles short in his quest to be the first person to cross the peninsula alone and unassisted. He was already the only person ever to have completed the two classic routes to the South Pole established by his Edwardian predecessors, Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton. The last was his own particular hero; whenever Worsley was in a fix he would ask himself: “How would Shacks get out of this?”