Amazing tales for making men out of boys (Penguin Books)

Captain Robert Falcon Scott didn't start out life as a hero. In fact, as a boy and young man he was considered small, frail and shy. So what was it that turned this ordinary man into a legend? Through his gripping new account of how this modest naval officer became Scott of the Antarctic, Neil Oliver vividly relates the awe-inspiring tales that inspired Britain's greatest hero. And alongside these epics of courage, fortitude and sacrifice, Oliver tells the astonishing stories of those heroes who followed Scott and whose deeds stood comparison with this iconic explorer's own humbling example. From Rorke's Drift to the Battle of Britain and Nelson to Neil Armstrong, these are men who understood - as Scott always did - that it was more important to die a hero than live a coward's life.