The White Darkness
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The White Darkness
Narrated by:
Will Patton
Buy Now for £7.99
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Narrated by:
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Will Patton
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By:
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David Grann
About this listen
Henry Worsley was a devoted husband and father and a decorated British special forces officer who believed in honour and sacrifice. He was also a man obsessed. He spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the 20th-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Shackleton never completed his journeys, but he repeatedly rescued his men from certain death and emerged as one of the greatest leaders in history.
Worsley felt an overpowering connection to those expeditions. He was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artefacts from their epic treks across the continent. He modelled his military command on Shackleton's legendary skills and was determined to measure his own powers of endurance against them. He would succeed where Shackleton had failed, in the most brutal landscape in the world.
In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion and hidden crevasses. Yet when he returned home he felt compelled to go back. On November 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone.
David Grann tells Worsley's remarkable story with the intensity and power that have led him to be called ‘simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today’. Illustrated with more than 50 stunning photographs from Worsley's and Shackleton's journeys, The White Darkness is both a gorgeous keepsake volume and a spellbinding story of courage, love and a man pushing himself to the extremes of human capacity.
Praise for David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon:
‘A riveting true story of greed, serial murder and racial injustice’ JON KRAKAUER
‘A fiercely entertaining mystery story and a wrenching exploration of evil’ KATE ATKINSON
‘A fascinating account of a tragic and forgotten chapter in the history of the American West’ JOHN GRISHAM
‘Disturbing and riveting...Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true...It will sear your soul’ DAVE EGGERS, New York Times Book Review
‘An extraordinary story with extraordinary pace and atmosphere’ Sunday Times
Critic reviews
‘Will inspire some, just as it frightens others… the story of what addiction can do to you: addiction to a place, to suffering and to the heroic idea of what it meant to be British’
'History tends to favour Captain Scott's polar legend, but Worsley preferred Shackleton... Worsley makes it to Shackleton's mark and the pole beyond, then returns twice more, including an attempted solo crossing... For a lesson in tenacity, it's up there'
‘Grann’s ability and eye for detail have crafted a fine and moving tale’
‘Grann is a New Yorker staff writer to be reckoned with... Tones of Mailer and Hemingway gust through the book as Grann tells the story of his hero… The greatness of Worsley’s courage, and the descriptions of his family and friends, are truly moving’
‘Worsley had immense courage, a lovable, almost boyish sense of adventure, and his family felt huge pride in him, as did the British nation’
David Grann captures the desire to explore held in the heart of all explorers
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