I May Be Some Time

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I May Be Some Time is a richly engrossing cultural history of our obsession with ice, Eskimos and polar exploration.When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the national imagination. Despite wars and social change, despite recent debunking, it is still there. Everyone remembers the doomed explorers' last words - 'I'm just going outside, and I may be some time' - and history is what you can remember.Conventional histories of polar exploration trace the laborious expeditions across the map, dwelling on the proper techniques of ice-navigation and sledge-travel. But we rarely ask what the explorers thought they were doing, or why they did these insane things.I May Be Some Time is about the poles as they have been perceived, dreamed, even desired. It explores the myth as myth, showing how Scott's death was the culmination to a long-running national enchantment with perilous journeys to the ends of the earth.'The thrills of desolation, of icy beauty, of challenge, of human courage, of comradeship . . . I May Be Some Time is a truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination.' Jan Morris, The Times

Reviews

. . . a high-cultural history, both passionate and intricate . . . Breathtaking. "The Boston Globe"
An engaging, elegant, often majestic work of cultural history. T"he Philadelphia Inquirer"
Thoughtful, suggestive and oddly fascinating. "Men's Journal"

0;. . . a high-cultural history, both passionate and intricate . . . Breathtaking.1; 2;"The Boston Globe"
0;An engaging, elegant, often majestic work of cultural history.1; 2;T"he Philadelphia Inquirer"
0;Thoughtful, suggestive and oddly fascinating.1; 2;"Men's Journal"

" . . . a high-cultural history, both passionate and intricate . . . Breathtaking." -- "The Boston Globe"
" An engaging, elegant, often majestic work of cultural history." -- T"he Philadelphia Inquirer"
" Thoughtful, suggestive and oddly fascinating." -- "Men's Journal"

." . . a high-cultural history, both passionate and intricate . . . Breathtaking." --"The Boston Globe"
"An engaging, elegant, often majestic work of cultural history." --T"he Philadelphia Inquirer"
"Thoughtful, suggestive and oddly fascinating." --"Men's Journal"

Author Bio

Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (1977), has edited two acclaimed literary anthologies and a collection of essays on the history of technology. His first book, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, was awarded the Writers Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 1996 and a Somerset Maugham Award, and also inspired a Frankfurt Ballet production and a clown show at the Edinburgh Festival 2001. He lives in Camberwell, London.