Scott and Amundsen

On 17 January 1912, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and four companions, H R Bowers, Edgar Evans, Lawrence Oates and Edward Wilson, reached the South Pole. There, they found a tent pitched by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and in it a note for Scott, dated the previous month. The tragic drama of the British party's return journey, having been so cruelly beaten to the post in this chilling race to the Pole, only became after their final camp was found in November 1912. They were just 18 kilometers short of safety. Scott's diary, ending with the words 'I do not think I can write any more', gave a graphic account of their sufferings, including the heroic suicide of Captain Oates. His comment on the pole itself was unromantic: 'Great God! this is an awful place.'
In this double biography, Rainer K. Langner describes a duel in the eternal ice, a duel between planning and romanticism: 'The race to the Pole was won in the head, it was in fact the solution of a logistical problem. 'Everything Amundsen did, he did right: he used dogs and skis, proceeded fast and had stored up enough energy reserves. Scott rejected dogs, his comrades were no expert skiers and he fatefully increased the number of men to go with him to five. Langner descriptions and analysis are compelling reading - as if he had been present at the time.