Exploration
Why are the sailors who first braved the Atlantic so often ignored?
Long before Columbus crossed the ocean in 1492, the Phoenicians had discovered the Azores, and by the year 1000 Norse men and women were eking out an existence in Greenland
Robyn Davidson explores yet another foreign country – the past
Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11
Explorer, author, soldier, lover: The Romantic, by William Boyd, reviewed
William Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the…
Finally, the Sherpas are heroes of their own story
John Keay has for many years been a key historian and prolific contributor to the romance attaching to the highest…
The poet and the polymath: two 16th-century Portuguese travellers
In 1866, Dante Gabriel Rossetti visited a London print shop to buy a large canvas of a Renaissance street. He…
Another fallen idol: the myth of Ferdinand Magellan debunked
Ferdinand Magellan’s fame was largely undeserved. Horatio Clare sees the explorer cut down to size
Journey to the end of the world: the full horror of the Belgica’s Antarctic expedition
The epic story of the Antarctic voyage of the Belgica (1897-9) has all the ingredients of a truly glorious misadventure:…
Does William Barents deserve to have a sea named after him?
Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but…
Heated debate over Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition
How refreshing in a time of general sensitivity to find a book intended to infuriate and debunk. Welcome to the…
Globalisation is scarcely new: it dates back to the year 1000
In Japan, people thought the world would end in 1052. In the decades leading up to judgment day, Kyoto was…
A remote island tribe in Indonesia makes whaling seem positively noble
Our relations with cetaceans have always been charged with danger and delight, represented by the extremes of the Book of…
The unearthly powers of the North Pole
Having spent too much of my life at both poles (writing, not sledge-pulling), I know the spells those places cast.…
Bitten by the cold: the strange attraction of polar exploration
‘We had seen God in his splendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of…
Leeches, bats and toxic sap in Borneo’s Eden
Eton turns out prime ministers of various stripes and patches, but it also forges fine explorers. It seems to prepare…
Holy mackerel! Civilisation begins with fishing
Fish. Slippery, mysterious creatures. They are mysterious because of where they live, in vast waters, and because they elude the…
Thin air and frayed tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
Alexander Humboldt: a great explorer rediscovered
The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was once the most famous man in Europe bar Napoleon. And if you judge…
Ernest Shackleton and other South Georgia ghosts
The terrible news that Henry Worsley had died just 30 miles short of crossing the Antarctic continent unsupported reached me…
The Edge of the World: deep subject, shallow history
Michael Pye appears out of his depth in a cold, grey sea in the mists of time, says Adam Nicolson
A horse ride from Buenos Aires to New York? No problem!
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
From Scylax to the Beatles: the West's lust for India
Peter Parker on the age-old allure of the Indian subcontinent
