I May Be Some Time Ice and the English Imagination

Francis Spufford explores the British obsession with polar exploration in a book that Jan Morris, writing in The Times, called, "A truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination . . ." The title, a last quote from one explorer to his party as he left their tent never to return, embodies the danger and mystery that fueled the romantic allure of the poles and, subsequently, the British imagination. Far from being a conventional history of polar exploration, I May Be Some Time attempts to understand what was going on in the minds of the polar explorers as they headed toward destinies like Terra Nova. Serving up a heady brew of Captain Perry, Jane Eyre, gastronomic obsessions with iced desserts, and the daily lives of Eskimos, Spufford treats the reader to one of the most satisfying and imaginative contemporary works dealing with exploration and human need.

Francis Spufford, writes for the Guardian,has edited two anthologies and lives in Cambridge, England with his wife and daughter. For this, his first book, he received a Somerset Maughm Award and was namedThe Sunday Times (London) Young Writer of the Year.

I bought this book as a thinking-person's companion to books like INTO THIN AIR and our own THE CLIMB. Francis is a hip, smart, young writer from England and his book fits just that description. It's a great, engrossing read.
A Different History for the Poles * The Sublime * News from Nowhere * Damn the North Pole * The Powers of Frost and Air * Lady Jane’s Lament * Relics in the Snow * Imagining Eskimos * Comfortable Barbarians * I Have Always Taken My Place, Haven’t I?