Ranulph Fiennes

A very solid biography of the whole of Shackleton's life and not just focused on the Endurance. The reality seemed to be that he spent rather more time fund raising and on hair brained business ideas than I had expected. Ultimately Shackleton seemed to suffer the fate that has been described in many of the rock biographies that I have read. Namely, that the middle-aged protagonist falls from the heights their youthful selves attained, and subsequently become trapped in an unhappy spiral of show more attempts to recapture them.

Clearly the extra credibility that Fiennes can add over any other biographer is a unique and compelling reason to read this book. He perhaps over eggs the pudding a little drifting into autobiography on several occasions.

That said, a good read that was excellently narrated. show less

Ranulph Fiennes, himself a polar explorer or perhaps more of a polar extreme sportsman, clearly admires Sir Ernest Shackleton as a kindred spirit and born leader of men. The reality may not be quite so impressive but Fiennes is fair in presenting all sides, negative and positive, of the man.

Shackleton was, in fact, a somewhat narcissistic chancer rising up Britain's imperial ranks from middle class Irish origins to become a national hero largely because of his ability to present plucky show more failure as great achievement.

He made three significant polar exploration trips. He died, exhausted, at the start of a fourth. None of his own expeditions was backed by Government and were undertaken against the tide of establishment sentiment although not of royal moral patronage.

The first was with Scott. He showed himself to be, by rights, a proficient polar explorer even though he was embarrassed by his relative weakness in the latter stages of that particular attempt to reach the South Pole. Nevertheless he did what few men could do then and less men could do today.

He became a rival of the RGS-favoured Scott in fitting out a second expedition which failed to reach the Pole but which set a new record for latitude and made some significant scientific discoveries. Although not always the most effective of organisers, he proved himself a born leader.

Shackleton was always surrounded by controversy in good part because of this chancer aspect of his nature, leaving a pile of unpaid debts surrounding his adventures even to the extent of not being able to pay the men who had risked their lives for him. There was no malice in this.

The third attempt to reach the Pole was just the sort of magnificent failure that the British love but it was, to be honest, a total disaster mitigated only by Shackleton's own courage in one of the most difficult survival treks ever across ice, sea and land which ensured that no man was lost.

Or at least no man was lost under his command on the South American side of his attempt to traverse Antarctica after Scott had beat him to the prize of the Pole. The Australasian side of the expedition fared less well under weaker leadership.

Fiennes writes very well. The book is worth reading for two reasons in particular - as a picture of the beginning of the chaotic decline of British morale in the period between the Boer and First World Wars and as an account of the physical endurance of polar explorers of that period.

These were remarkable men capable of enduring months of pain and misery on what some might consider a quixotic desire to be the first to plant a flag in the middle of absolutely nothing just to show it could be done and be done for the honour of an empire.

The account of the death-defying trek 'home' to South Georgia on two small boats with a full complement of men through tremendous South Atlantic seas on starvation rations ends with two men (Shackleton one of them) climbing an unknown mountain range, with no equipment, to get help.

If ever there was a case of 'leave no man behind', this was it with Shackleton struggling repeatedly to find the resources to rescue half his men left on Elephant Island as well as bring others back from the far side of South Georgia and then rescue those stranded on the other side of the continent.

The heroism is not one of achievement but of dogged courage on a mad mission and a commitment to 'a band of brothers' in a way wholly analogous to men at war. The snide anti-imperialism sneering of modern liberals simply does not get that meaning can come from the absurd.

There are no more such explorations to be done of this scale unless it is into space with Musk, perhaps reflecting from his South African youth the last vestiges of the spirit of imperial adventure, albeit for another dying empire that may now be looking for meaning and heroes.

In the case of Shackleton, the film footage and some of the photographic plates from his third trip made it back home. In conjunction with his book 'South', these introduced many to Antarctica for the first time and its bleak beauty. The BFI made this available as a DVD some years ago.

Fiennes has form himself as a polar explorer and is also no mean ego. Taste will differ as to his frequent interjections commenting on aspects of Shackleton's adventures from his own experiential perspective. Sometimes it is apposite, sometimes a little self-aggrandising.

However, he may be forgiven on two grounds. He writes vividly with no doubt that his experience often helps to refine the tale. Despite his liking for a fellow chancer who was perhaps much less professional and disciplined than Fiennes, he is always fair and balanced.

Although we know what Fiennes thinks, he does not tell us what to think. We can decide just how much to admire and not admire of a classic British imperial hero whose memorial sits today in Westminister Abbey even if he is buried in South Georgia close to his beloved Antarctica.

As to what Shackleton means rather than who he was, that is quite complicated. His adventures depended on private patronage and an astute use of the media (much as Fiennes himself has done). He would tell the half-truths of any entrepreneur engaged in a risky enterprise.

Given that he had no official status unlike Scott who was a Royal Naval officer, the fact that a member of the Merchant Marine could blag his way into accompanying Scott on the ice and then raise the funds for three expeditions despite some catastrophic failures of judgement is remarkable.

And he did this despite the evident disapproval of the pro-Scott Royal Geographical Society, the behaviour of some of whose members was distinctly shoddy. Always being on the teetering edge of scandal suggests that he did have the luck of the Irish or here was a touch of the con-artist.

But this was an interesting period in British history. Victoria was dead (much as the death of Elizabeth II seems the end of an era). The Boer War (like Afghanistan today) shook imperial confidence. Hysteria was starting to develop over Germany as it is over Russia today.

The heroic age of British Imperialism was coming to an end. Heroes were running out of space. The Titanic shook the nation in 1912. Domestic politics was turbulent. Scott of the Antarctic and more briefly Shackleton filled a space ambiguously with effort meaning more than the achievement.

My old school song from an old-style Grammar School still aping imperial traditions in the late 1960s had the words 'sentiment is more than skill'. This unprofessional amateurish mentality was very much the world of the Edwardians and Mr. Chipping. It could be said to be Shackleton's.

Shackleton's reputation drifted. The British gave preference to Scott. Then sentiment shifted back to Shackleton because of his remarkable leadership of the Endurance team on his third trip but now we face a new phase of cultural whining about anything associated with the old empire.

But history is not a plaything of the present. The past has to be seen as the past saw itself. We too should learn to see the Edwardian era for what it was - a complex lost culture of remarkable achievement and heroism alongside crass stupidities and delusion, both exploitative and creative.

But the overwhelming response to the story is the fact that men could choose such hardship for an ideal and then, when things went wrong, (mostly) buckle under and survive horrendous conditions to tell the story of something they believed in no matter how absurd it may seem a hundred years later.

It was a mentality that had hundred of thousands of men existentially choosing to go to war with conscription only appearing in 1916 as the sentimental got mowed down in the tens of thousands. This would not happen today. Even the Ukrainians are having to send thugs out to round up men.

The incomprehension of twenty first century man (and woman in particular although woman are now in the ranks of space and polar explorers) of such pre-technological hardship being chosen and more than once tells us something of the effect of the rest of the twentieth century on us.

As late as the 1940s and 1950s, millions of men also fought in subzero temperatures (Russian, German, Chinese, American, Korean and others) partly from ignorance, partly because they had no choice and partly from deep belief in what they were fighting for.

In the twenty first century, we are no longer ignorant of war, we fight for our choices and our beliefs are fragmented. On balance, this is a very good thing and may act as a baulk on the lunatics who run NATO but we should try to understand this other ancient way of thinking as well.

Anyone voluntarily dying for the City of London or Wall Street or the extension of corporate power under modern liberal imperialism is a fool but it would be good to hold the idea of Shackleton in reserve as model if one foreign boot was fool enough to step on our shores without permission. show less

Sir Ranulph tells Shackleton's story with verve and fresh insights given his own background in polar exploration. I enjoyed the interjections about his personal experiences and felt they shed light on Shackleton's decisionmaking. He weighs up the good and the bad and provides a thorough portrait of a man motivated by a strong moral sensibility as well as by ambition.

This was recommended to me by family and as I enjoyed Endurance about Shackleton's adventures recently I decided to give it a go.

Ranulph Fiennes was labelled as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" by his prospective father in law. The book is a compelling account of a life-time of icy expeditions to the poles, marathons against the clock on every continent, and, later in life, treacherous mountain climbs despite suffering from vertigo.

At night the act of breathing caused the worst discomfort. show more Generally speaking, polar travel would be quite pleasant if it was not necessary to breathe. When we tried to snuggle down inside our sleeping bags, our breath formed a thick rime of frost where it met cold air. The resulting frost layers cascaded down our necks whenever we moved. To avoid this I blocked both nostrils up with plugs of kleenex and tried to position my mouth to breathe out of the bag's hood-hole. This worked well except that my frostbitten nose remained outside the bag's warmth and, unprotected from the tent's average temperature of -40C, was far colder than a deep freeze.

I became slightly lost in adventurer jargon and terminology for parts of the book, not really understanding what all of the words meant and therefore not being able to envisage the scenes as I would have liked. However, the sheer breadth of Fiennes experiences here means that there is something for everyone--I enjoyed the section of mountain climbing towards the end finding myself close to suffering vertigo from the comfort of my living room!

I enjoyed the author's humour and his unconventional approach, probably summed up in this quotation

I reflected that if a committee had been running this expedition, after the fashion of our Transglobe committee, we would never have resolved things so quickly! I remembered reading that 'a committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide nothing can be done.'

The over-arching question in the mind of the reader is of course, why? Why would someone put themselves through the excruciating pain and frequent near death experiences? Some do it as a hobby or to see the beautiful scenery or even as a form of competitive risk. But Fiennes is clear that his primary motivation is that his chosen vocation pays the bills and raises money for charity--£10 million to date.

As a Christian, I struggled in places knowing that Fiennes, despite his great earthly achievements, appears to have no personal assurance of salvation and no understanding of the path to eternal life.

I trusted that my own bog standard Church of England beliefs would sort out whatever fate had in store for me

I hope there is an afterlife, as I would love to meet my father for the first time.

I also struggled with what he put both of his wives (and later his child) through despite them clearly being behind his various exploits or accepting them having married him with their eyes open.

There is infrequent bad language, but no sexual or violent content that I recall. The book is well researched and includes details of many historic adventurers and their achievements. It is extremely readable. Recommended. show less