Sara
Wheeler - Cherry. A life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard
De achterflap:
Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) was one of the youngest
members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic.
Despite appalling short sight Cherry undertook an epic journey
in the Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor
penguin. The temperature fell to seventy below, it was dark
all the time, his teeth shattered in the cold and the tent
blew away. 'But we kept our tempers,' Cherry wrote, 'even
with God.'
After serving in the First World War Cherry was invalid
home, and with the zealous encouragement of his neighbour
Bernard Shaw he wrote a masterpiece. The Worst Journey
in the World frees Scott's story from the shackles
of its period and ushers it into the immortal zone. Since
first publication in 1922 the bitter brilliance and elegiac
melancholy of Cherry's prose has touched the hearts of hundreds
of thousands of readers.
In his work Cherry transformed tragedy and grief into something
fine. But he was to find that life is more complicated than
literature, and as the years unravelled he faced a terrible
struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted
by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his
companions.
This is the first biography. Sara Wheeler, who has travelled
extensively in the Antarctic, has had unrestricted access
to new material and the full cooperation of Cherry's family.
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