Empire Antarctica
Subtitle: ice, silence & emperor penguins
By: Gavin Francis
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9781619021846
Subjects: Natural history; Travel; Description and travel
Description: Describes the author's time working as a basecamp doctor at Antarctica's Halley research station and his fascination with the emperor penguin community that shared the icy continent with him.

Francis fulfilled a lifetime's ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. It was a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and a very little human history, but also a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Francis explores the world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of living at 50c below zero and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community bring.
Notes: "First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Chatto & Windus"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Preface : a glimpse from the ice; title: Imagining Antarctica; title: The axis of the Atlantic; title: Of kings and emperors; title: Antarctica at last!; title: High days and holidays; title: The hinge of the continent; title: Waiting for winter; title: Darkness and light; title: Midwinter; title: The third quarter; title: The promise of life; title: Gathering light; title: Freedom of the ice; title: Of endings and beginnings; title: Afterword : the memory of Antarctica.