A brilliantly realized evocation of the thoughts and voices of Captain Scott and the four men with him, who suffered extraordinary hardships before finally dying during their 1912 attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole.
The Birthday Boys tells the story of Scott’s doomed expedition through the voices of five men on the voyage. As Scott, Petty Officer Taff Evans, ship’s doctor Dr Edward Wilson, Lieutenant Henry Bowers and Captain Lawrence Oates step forward for their place in the narrative, the reader is gripped by the the characters themselves alongside the vividly evoked period.
‘Her darkest work, equally convincing in its evocations of the icy, unendurable landscape without, and the chilling interior landscapes of damaged souls.’ Sunday Telegraph
Marvellous Therapy
I first met Beryl Bainbridge in 1982, when I went to interview her friend and editor Anna Haycraft for Books & Bookmen. I was later to discover that Beryl practically lived at the Haycrafts’ house...
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