I may be some time
Subtitle: ice and the English imagination
By: Francis Spufford.
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 1996
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 372
Subjects: Polar regions -- Discovery and exploration -- History.; Polar regions -- Discovery and exploration -- English.
Other titles: Ice and the English imagination.
Description: "I May Be Some Time is a richly engrossing cultural history of our obsession with ice, Eskimos and polar exploration." "When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the national imagination. Despite wars and social change, despite recent debunking, it is still there. Everyone remembers the doomed explorers' last words - 'I'm just going outside, and I may be some time' - and history is what you can remember." "Conventional histories of polar exploration trace the laborious expeditions across the map, dwelling on the proper techniques of ice-navigation and sledge-travel. But we rarely ask what the explorers thought they were doing, or why they did these insane things." "I May Be Some Time is about the poles as they have been perceived, dreamed, even desired. It explores myth as myth, showing how Scott's death was the culmination to a long-running national enchantment with perilous journeys to the ends of the earth." "Francis Spufford reveals an extraordinary history of feeling - the call of vast empty spaces, the beauty of untrodden snow - as he pieces together the elements of a myth which still has the power to seduce."--BOOK JACKET.