Public Website
A volunteer is sought to assume complete editorial control of the Club’s quarterly Newsletter from the end of 2011, soliciting content, selecting that which is most appropriate, liaising with our proof-reader and interfacing directly with the graphics designer who takes care of layout. If this challenge is of genuine interest to you, please contact the Club Secretary via the AAC(UK) Office for further details.
Members
To access our
Members' Website
you need to
Log In
using the Username and Password
listed in our recent Newsletter.
Invitation
The largest UK Mountaineering Club
warmly invites you to
Search this website,
check our Programme of Events
view our answers to
Frequently Asked Questions
find out more about the
Austrian Alpine Club
check our Site Map
Contact Us
and Join
Membership includes at no extra charge:
-
Mountain Rescue Insurance: worldwide, without age limit and inclusive of repatriation;
-
Alpine Hut Rights; members' discounts at huts belonging to the national mountaineering federations.
Joining is easy and is explained on our Membership page
Book Review
The Polar World
|
By Sir Wally Herbert
published by Polarworld 2007. £35 ISBN 978-0-9555255-1-3
|
 |
Coffee table books seldom come more impressive that this one, but it is hard to imagine anyone less likely to be found sitting round the said table than the subject. A stunning self portrait of an ice encrusted face stares from the front cover – executed with a pencil and scalpel. How on earth do you DRAW with a scalpel? Buy the book and find out. Wally Herbert wanted to be an explorer from his earliest years. Did he achieve his ambition? Would you call a man who travelled over 25,000 miles by dog team, who was the first to walk across the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole and who has mapped unexplored country from the equator to both Poles an explorer? I should think so! |
| Although he showed early artistic promise at school, Wally Herbert was over 50 before becoming a fully fledged artist, painting most of his pictures from memory and photographs after his more ambitious exploring days were over. The images are of action, atmosphere and drama.. They leave you lost in reverie. Not all of the paintings are from Herbert’s own experiences. There is a watercolour of Nansen's ship the 'Fram' and an oil painting of Everest base camp. There are paintings of Shackleton’s escape from the wreck of the Endurance and portraits of historical figures. Herbert reviews historic explorations as well as his own expeditions: the boredom of life for the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen on a ship frozen into the same patch of ice for three years as it slowly drifted across the roof of the world and the difficult relationship between Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott. Could there be another Wally Herbert? No. Summer arctic ice may be gone within as little as two years and the west Antarctic ice sheet is bound for destruction. There would be nowhere for him to go. Buy the book – a record of the life and times of the last truly great Polar Explorer.
Reviewed by Fred Nind |
[introduction] [benefits] [activities] [membership] [members' website] [links] [everything else]
Last updated 11 February 2009