Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish explorer, never achieved his goal of reaching the South Pole, though he was knighted in 1909 for having come within 100 miles. With bravery matched only by his theatricality, Shackleton sought to top that accomplishment by landing on one side of Antarctica and traveling the width of the icy continent by sledge. What might have been a great exploratory journey turned into a raw struggle for survival when his ship became trapped in pack ice, and he was forced to lead his team on a desperate trek across hundreds of miles of the world's most dangerous terrain. He made it home, but even his stature as one of Edwardian England's greatest heroes could not save Shackleton from financial risk taking; he ended his life mired in debt. Roland Huntford's biography presents a balanced and lively portrait of a man who was, depending on which of his contemporaries you asked, a national hero or a contemptible rogue.

Roland Huntford (born 1927) is an author, principally of biographies of Polar explorers. He lives in Cambridge, and was formerly Scandinavian correspondent of The Observer, also acting as their winter sports correspondent. He was the 1986-87 Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford.

He has written biographies of Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen. Huntford's controversial The Last Place on Earth (originally titled Scott and Amundsen) had a tremendous impact on public interest in Polar matters.