Empire Antarctica (Early Journalistic Content)

I previously had a book review column in a Scottish newspaper. This was one of my favourite reads/entries.

‘Empire Antarctica – Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins’

“It took a great effort of mind, struggling against all my body’s instincts, to ease off on the rope and slip in staccato jerks into the hole. ...My world transformed. Lilac and azure flooded my eyes; I had dropped into a cathedral of light... To the side of me tapering walls of ice, fissured and veined like cracked glass sheered away into an endlessly changing labyrinth that would never, could never be explored.”

Not many writers have described an Antarctic crevasse from forty metres within. Mainly because not many have the mettle to withstand 14 months living on an Antarctic research base, and to write about it subsequently with such haunting beauty that the rest of us can vicariously live it too.

In this memoir-travelogue, Scottish MD Gavin Francis jumps at the once-in-a-lifetime chance to become base doctor for the British Antarctic Survey on the Caird Coast of Antarctica, eager to escape metropolitan monotony. The world he lands in couldn’t be further removed from the urban hubbub. The camp of just 14 scientists and engineers, nestled in an ice shelf wrapped in a vast cocoon of snow, is so remote it is entirely inaccessible during the winter – it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than from the Halley.

From ski and skidoo exploration in the perpetually light summer months to the ethereal auroras witnessed during the three month-long darkness, Francis’ lyrical description of the sights and sounds of this frozen world is stunning.

Happily evolved to withstand the severity of life at minus 50 degrees Celsius, the penguins are the only other breathing community for miles. The close-by emperor penguin rookery is a constant source of wonder and curiosity for Francis, who carefully, at times hilariously, documents their lifecycle over his Antarctic sojourn.

Whilst waiting out blizzards or whiling away the polar darkness, Francis pores over previous Antarctic explorers’ tales, and snippets of these are embedded within his own account. Shackelton, Scott, Byrd; they’re all there - adding historical and geographical depth. Francis’ lucid and erudite account is a worthy companion to the literature of these polar legends. The trials of intense isolation and introspection are a prevailing theme, frequently prompting deliciously unsettling introspection.

Gavin Francis’ breathtaking landscape of words should come with a warning; if ever a book was to lure you away from the daily grind; seizing your sense of wanderlust by the throat, this is it.

By Alexandra Frize-Williams

Empire Antarctica
Author: Gavin Francis
Publisher: Vintage Books
Price: £8.99 in the UK (paperback)

‘Empire Antarctica - Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins’ was winner of the Scottish Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Prize.