TraveLit--A blog about travel literature.
Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys.
"Piazza Navona is not only the most exquisitely beautiful square in Rome, it's also the beating heart of the city."
―William Murray, City of the Soul: A Walk in Rome (Crown), not an essential book for the visitor, but an engaging, informative stroll through the city, written by someone who has lived there, as a child and an adult. Read More
Robert Falcon ("Con")Scott, Dr. Edward ("Uncle Bill") Wilson, Henry Robertson ("Birdie") Bowers, Lawrence Edward ("Titus") Oates, and Edgar ("Taff") Evans reach the South Pole in March 1912 to find that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen has beaten them to it.
A painful photo, illuminated by Beryl Bainbridge's novel, The Birthday Boys, which I've reviewed below.
And while I'm on the topic of the Scott expedition, another book I'd recommend is The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. "Cherry," only 24 at the time of Scott's Terra Nova Expedition, was not along on the final run and lived to write this excellent work, with its account of the side-trip he made with Wilson and Bowers to visit the Emperor penguin rookery at Cape Crozier--an extraordinary journey so challenging they barely survived. Read More
The Birthday Boys
By Beryl Bainbridge. With a brief biography and photos of the author. Open Road Media, Digital, 2016.
https://www.amazon.com/Birthday-Boys-Novel-Beryl-Bainbridge-ebook/dp/B01KNCU90U
Many books have been written about Robert Falcon Scott’s fatal expedition to the South Pole, but none I’ve read is more gripping than Beryl Bainbridge’s novel, The Birthday Boys. From the outset, we know the conclusion: the five men on the final run will reach the Pole, will find that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen has beat them to it, and will die returning to camp. But Bainbridge brings the men so fully to life, we feel we’re with them in their present, unaware of what lies ahead.
The novel is ingeniously constructed. Read More