Madhouse at the End of the World

Julian Sancton

WH Allen

£20

There’s a startling opening to this account of the Belgica’s 1897-8 expedition to the Antarctic – Frederick Cook, a doctor, serving 14 years for fraud in Leavenworth Goal Kansas, has finished his voluntary night duty among the inmates howling from the agony of opium deprivation, when he is visited by the most famous polar explorer of this generation, Roald Amundsen. The deep bond between the men was forged 25 years earlier when they were shipmates on Adrien de Gerlache’s flawed scientific exploration, when pressure of national expectation, inadequate finance and individual misjudgement led to a dark winter of illness and insanity in the Antarctic pack ice. Julian Sancton’s impressive research and incisive writing style ensures that the interest never flags.