Sara Wheeler | |
---|---|
Born | Bristol, United Kingdom | 20 March 1961
Occupation | Travel writer |
Alma mater | Oxford University (BA) |
Subject | Polar expeditions |
Sara Diane Wheeler FRSL (born 20 March 1961) is an English travel author and biographer, noted for her accounts of polar regions.
Sara Wheeler was brought up in Bristol, England, and studied Classics and Modern Languages at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. After writing about her travels on the Greek island of Euboea and in Chile, she was accepted by the US National Science Foundation as their first female writer-in-residence at the South Pole, and spent seven months in Antarctica.
In her resultant book Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, she mentioned sleeping in the captain’s bunk in Scott's Hut. [1] Whilst in Antarctica she read The Worst Journey in the World , an account of the Terra Nova Expedition, and she later wrote a biography of its author, Apsley Cherry-Garrard. [2]
In 1999 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [3] From 2005 to 2009 she served as Trustee of the London Library. [4]
She was frequently abroad for two years, travelled to Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Canada and North Norway to write her book The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic. A journalist at the Daily Telegraph in the UK called it a "snowstorm of historical, geographical and anthropological facts". [5]
In a 2012 BBC Radio 4 series: To Strive and Seek, she told the personal stories of five various members of the Terra Nova Expedition. [6]
O My America!: Second Acts in a New World records the lives of women who travelled to America in the first half of the 19th century: Fanny Trollope, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, Rebecca Burlend, Isabella Bird, and Catherine Hubback, and the author's travels in pursuit of them. [7]
In 2023, Wheeler published Glowing Still, a collection of essays based on her travels, and her reflections on how the world has changed in her lifetime. [8] [9]
Edward Adrian Wilson was an English polar explorer, ornithologist, natural historian, physician and artist.
Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912. It was designed and built by the Scottish-Norwegian shipwright Colin Archer for Fridtjof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition in which the plan was to freeze Fram into the Arctic ice sheet and float with it over the North Pole.
Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard was an English explorer of Antarctica. He was a member of the Terra Nova expedition and is acclaimed for his 1922 account of this expedition, The Worst Journey in the World.
Thomas Crean was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving (AM).
Henry Robertson Bowers was one of Robert Falcon Scott's polar party on the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition of 1910–1913, all of whom died during their return from the South Pole.
William Lashly was a Royal Navy seaman who served as lead stoker on both the Discovery expedition and the Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal. Lashly was also recognised with the Albert Medal for playing a key role in saving the life of a comrade on the second of the two expeditions.
The Terra NovaExpedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition, was an expedition to Antarctica which took place between 1910 and 1913. Led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the expedition had various scientific and geographical objectives. Scott wished to continue the scientific work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition from 1901 to 1904, and wanted to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole.
George Murray Levick was a British Antarctic explorer, naval surgeon and founder of the Public Schools Exploring Society.
The Worst Journey in the World is a 1922 memoir by Apsley Cherry-Garrard of Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910–1913. It has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning of human suffering under extreme conditions.
Victor Lindsey Arbuthnot Campbell was an English Royal Navy officer and Antarctic explorer.
Inexpressible Island is a small, rocky island in Terra Nova Bay, Victoria Land, Antarctica. Previously uninhabited, the Chinese Qinling research station on the southern edge of the island became operational in 2024.
Cape Crozier is the most easterly point of Ross Island in Antarctica. It was discovered in 1841 during James Clark Ross's polar expedition of 1839 to 1843 with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and was named after Commander Francis Crozier, captain of HMS Terror, one of the two ships of Ross' expedition.
Patrick Keohane was an Irish member of Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expedition of 1910–1913, the Terra Nova expedition.
Edward Leicester Atkinson, was a Royal Navy surgeon and Antarctic explorer who was a member of the scientific staff of Captain Scott's Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13. He was in command of the expedition's base at Cape Evans for much of 1912, and led the party which found the tent containing the bodies of Scott, "Birdie" Bowers and Edward Wilson. Atkinson was subsequently associated with two controversies: that relating to Scott's orders concerning the use of dogs, and that relating to the possible incidence of scurvy in the polar party. He is commemorated by the Atkinson Cliffs on the northern coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica, at 71°18′S168°55′E.
Between December 1911 and January 1912, both Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole within five weeks of each other. But while Scott and his four companions died on the return journey, Amundsen's party managed to reach the geographic south pole first and subsequently return to their base camp at Framheim without loss of human life, suggesting that they were better prepared for the expedition. The contrasting fates of the two teams seeking the same prize at the same time invites comparison.
The Worst Journey in the World is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama based on the memoir of the same name by polar explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Narrator Barry Letts, best known for his tenure as the producer of Doctor Who, played Cherry-Garrard in the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic.
The British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott became the subject of controversy when, more than 60 years after his death on the return march from the South Pole in 1912, his achievements and character came under sustained attack.
This article is a list of English-language nonfiction books which have been described by reliable sources as in some way directly relating to the subject of Antarctica, its history, geography, people, etc.
Denis Gascoigne Lillie was a British biologist who participated in the Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913) to the Antarctic. He collected numerous marine animals as well as plants and fossils–many of which were new to science–and published scientific papers on whales, fossils, and medicine. He received the Polar Medal along with other Terra Nova members in 1913. He was also a noted caricaturist who made cartoons of professors, colleagues, and friends: some of his caricatures are collected in the National Portrait Gallery. He worked as a government bacteriologist during World War I and then suffered a severe mental breakdown, spending three years at Bethlem Royal Hospital and never fully recovering. He is commemorated in the names of several marine organisms as well as Lillie Glacier in Antarctica.
Oriana Fanny Wilson, was a British naturalist and humanitarian who received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services during the First World War. Her husband was the polar explorer Edward Adrian Wilson.
Quotations related to Sara Wheeler at Wikiquote