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| 16 Nov 2022 | |
| Past Events |
THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
A talk by Douglas Russell of the Natural History Museum and Sara Wheeler, the biographer of Apsley Cherry-Garrard.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard (OW) was with Scott of the Antarctic during the 1910-13 expedition. His 1922 book The Worst Journey in the World has been judged by the National Geographic the finest work of expedition literature ever written. Apsley is a talismanic figure. He was part of a group of three (Bowers and Wilson) who walked in near darkness for five weeks in temperatures that averaged –41 (hitting –67). The conditions were bleak: it was so cold, Apsley’s teeth shattered. They walked in pursuit of emperor penguin eggs hoping that these would provide a ‘Rosetta stone’ in understanding not only of penguin embryology but also the evolutionary history of birds.
