According to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, 'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised.' Despite this there has never been a shortage of volunteers willing to endure the bad times in pursuit of the glory that polar exploration sometimes brings.

Nick Rennison's compelling book tells the memorable stories of people who have risked their lives by entering the white wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic, from the compelling tales of Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen, to those of lesser known explorers such as Elisha Kent Kane and Douglas Mawson.

A Short History of Polar Exploration also looks briefly at the hold that the polar regions have often had on the imaginations of artists and writers in the last two hundred years examining the paintings, films and literature that they have inspired.

Once that interest has been stirred the polar regions will never loose their grip; they will never let you go -- Bill Spence * The York Press *

NICK RENNISON is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and in crime fiction. He is the author of 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year, A Short History of Polar Exploration, Peter Mark Roget: A Biography, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Robin Hood: Myth, History & Culture and Bohemian London, published by Oldcastle Books, and the editor of six anthologies of short stories for No Exit Press. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His crime novels, Carver's Quest and Carver's Truth, both set in nineteenth-century London, are published by Corvus. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and Daily Mail.