The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford

Amundsen returns safely to his base, but Scott's demoralized team is plagued by bad weather and mishaps of their own making.

Meanwhile, the seasoned polar campaigners, the Norwegians, use dog power to make it the Pole more than a month before Scott's weary team. In this brilliant dual biography, Roland. His Siberian ponies and motor sledges give out, and he and his men must carry the heavy sledges themselves to the Pole and all the way back to base. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the South Pole was the most coveted prize in the modern age of exploration. Both the Thatcherite Huntford's book and Marxist Trevor Griffiths' screenplay condemned Captain Scott. Upon hearing of Amundsen's challenge, Scott is reckless and makes ill-advised decisions. This article analyses a major television series on the race to the South Pole, The Last Place on Earth (1985), an adaptation of Roland Huntford's classic debunking biography Scott and Amundsen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979). Scott (played by Martin Shaw ) and his Norwegian rival in polar exploration, Roald Amundsen (played by Sverre Anker Ousdal. The book is an exploration of the expeditions of Captain Robert F. Though this was the age of the amateur explorer, Amundsen was a professional: he left little to chance, apprenticed with Eskimos, and obsessed over every detail. The Last Place on Earth is a 1985 Central Television seven-part serial, written by Trevor Griffiths based on the book Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford. Scott is portrayed here as an anti-hero - petty, poorly judging of men, animals, and conditions, and too proud of his Christian heritage to allow suffering of animals even when necessary. The Last Place on Earth is a complex and fascinating account of the race for this last great terrestrial goal, and it's pointedly geared toward demythologizing Scott. Unbeknownst to him, Roald Amundsen of Norway, his original plan to conquer the North Pole thwarted by Cook and Peary, decides to race Scott to the South Pole in the Antarctic summer of 1911-2. In 1911-1912, Robert Falcon Scott of Britain plans to penetrate Antarctica and be the first to reach the South Pole.

The Last Place on Earth by Roland Huntford