Book description
Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime's ambition when he spent fourteen
months as the base-camp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated
British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. So remote,
it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International
Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.
Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with
few distractions and very little human history, but also a rare
oppurtunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at
home in the Antarctic. Following the penguins throughout the year --
from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness --
Gavin Francis explores a world of great beauty conjured from the
simplest elements, the hardship of living at 50°C below zero and the
unexpected comfort that the penguin community bring.
Empire Antarctica is the story of one man and his fascination
with the world's loneliest continent, as well as the emperor penguins
who weather the winter with him. Combining an evocative narrative with
a sublime sensitivity to the natural world, this is travel writing at
its very best.
"Empire Antarctica" is the embodiment of everything I
admire in travel writing - a great journey, intense isolation, wide
reading, vivid writing, scientific research, and something in the nature
of an old-fashioned ordeal. That Gavin Francis is a medical doctor, with
an important role to play in the darkness and cold at the ends of the
earth, is a bonus. I loved this book. -- Paul Theroux Gavin Francis
was born in 1975 and brought up in Fife, Scotland. After qualifying from
medical school in Edinburgh he spent ten years travelling, visiting all
seven continents. He has worked in Africa and India, made several trips
to the Arctic, and crossed Eurasia and Australasia by motorcycle. His
first book,
True North,
was published in 2008. He has lectured at the Scott Polar Research
Institute in Cambridge, the Edinburgh Book Festival, and is a regular
speaker at the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. He lives in
Edinburgh.
www. gavinfrancis. com
