Shackleton (Penguin Books)

Pre-order the enthralling new biography of Ernest Shackleton aby the world's greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.'THE definitive book on Shackleton... Such an authentic account aby one of the few men who truly knows what it's like to challenge Antarctica.' LORRAINE KELLYTo write about Hell, it helps if you have been there.In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. What followed became legend.Throughout the long, dark Antarctic winter, Shackleton fights for his life and the lives of his men - enduring freezing temperatures, a perilous lifeboat journey through the ice-strewn sea, and a punishing march across the South Georgia glaciers to seek the one slim chance they have of rescue. Their situation is disastrous.Their survival would become history's most enthralling adventure. Yet Shackleton's critics have argued that the expedition was always doomed to fail. And that had Endurance not been destroyed aby ice, his men would have suffered a slow and horrible death before completing their journey.No previous biographer has experienced even a tiny taste of the polar hell on earth endured żeby Shackleton and his men. That cannot be said of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who has been described as 'our greatest living explorer'. From Shackleton's pursuit of adventure as a young merchant seamen, through his rivalry with Captain Scott, culminating in the two remarkable expeditions to Antarctica that revealed his unrivalled leadership and personal courage under the most extreme of circumstances, Fiennes brings the story vividly and viscerally to life, his own near-death on the ice, fifty years after his subject's death, providing the necessary proof to silence Shackleton's critics once and for all in a book that is part celebration, part vindication and all adventure.Praise for Sir Ranulph Fiennes:'The World's Greatest Living Explorer' - Guinness Book of Records'Full of awe-inspiring details of hardship, resolve and weather that defies belief, told żeby someone of unique authority. No one is more tailor-made to tell [this] story than Sir Ranulph Fiennes' - Newsday'Fiennes' own experiences certainly allow him to write vividly and with empathy of the hell that the men went through' - The Sunday Times