Writing about the Antarctic is “the aesthetic equivalent of scaling Everest”, the British-based Canadian writer Jean McNeil says in the Review section of The Guardian today. She names a few people who have been up to the task, ranging from Ernest Shackleton to Jenny Diski. McNeil herself has been writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey. Ice Diaries (published in 2016 by ECW Press) tells of that stint and her subsequent travels in Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard; you can read an extract on her website.