Of Ice and Men: The Story of the British Antarctic Survey 1943-73.

Shropshire, England: Anthony Nelson, 1995. Octavo, green boards (hardcover), gilt lettering, map illustrated endpapers, 381 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket. From dust jacket: Sir Vivian Fuchs, the most famous polar explorer of modern times, is uniquely placed to write about a great Antarctic venture which began modestly as a war-time naval operation in 1943 (designed to deny potential harbours to enemy vessels and to maintain the British Dependencies in the face of sudden Argentine claims) and ended up with a continent for science. Of Ice and Men tells the story of some 1250 young men who have spent two years or more of their lives in furthering Britain’s scientific prestige. They form an elite band, who have faced with courage the worst conditions that Nature can provide -- extreme cold, howling blizzards, twenty-four-hour nights, volcanic eruptions -- to pursue their studies. Seventeen lost their lives in the great adventure. They are all numbered among those who bring inspiration to the more mundane lives of others. Sir Vivian Fuchs has a sensitive appreciation and an historical perspective of the Antarctic, encompassing its Heroic Era of Scott, Shackleton, Mawson and Amundsen ,its labyrinth of political claims and disputes, its present-day stability under the umbrella of the Antarctic Treaty to which forty-two nations are signatories, and its future as a potential supplier of rich resources to an over-populated and competitive world. This is not a book about supermen but it is an exciting and inspiring story of which we may all feel proud. The author offers it as a tribute to those who lived it, and dedicates it to the nation which sustained it.