Joanna Kavenna 
Joanna Kavenna
I am re-reading D.H. Lawrence’s Sea and Sardinia. The opening line runs: ‘Comes over one an absolute necessity to move…’ He expands on the dilemma (I paraphrase): you are afflicted… Read more
Homage to the Goddess Mother
Cometh the hour, cometh the many men (and women). The 2012 centenary of Captain Scott’s death inspired a series of heroic forays into print: glory-hungry (or just plain hungry) authors… Read more
Inflated dreams
When almost every tale about the Arctic has been told, when the major explorers have been assessed and re-assessed, when even the most obscure bit-players have been drawn into the… Read more
Heroes of the Ice Age
In the early 20th century, explorers were goaded and galvanised by the blanks on the maps — the North and South Poles, and the mist-draped floes and glaciers around them.… Read more
The trail goes cold
For centuries, the history of the far North was a tapestry of controversies and mis- understandings, misspellings, dubious arrivals and equally dubious departures. Pytheas the Greek sailed north from Britain… Read more
In deep trouble
Atlantic by Simon Winchester and The Wave by Susan Casey are, at first glance, very different works. Atlantic is a historical-philosophical-fantastical meditation on the Atlantic ocean, from the ‘post-molten Hadean’… Read more
To strive, to seek, to find . . .
In 1931, a 23-year-old Englishman called Henry ‘Gino’ Watkins returned from an expedition to the white depths of the Greenlandic ice cap. In 1931, a 23-year-old Englishman called Henry ‘Gino’… Read more
The frost giant awakes
For thousands of years, no one knew what lay in the ice around the North Pole. The blanks on the maps fuelled the imaginations of classical writers, who crafted stories… Read more
Origins of the human race
At first glance, a history of running seems a pretty doomed exercise, like writing a history of breathing, or sneezing. For how can anyone really describe and ‘historicise’ an intrinsic… Read more
Top of the world
Late Nights on Air comes daubed with the usual eulogies, yet this is one book that truly merits the ecstatic blurb and more besides. It is Elizabeth Hay’s third novel,… Read more
Paddling through Canada
There are a lot of travel writers these days setting off ‘in the footsteps of’ someone else, gathering clues and arguing with ghosts. This is partly pragmatism: there are so… Read more
The frozen, unruly north
John Gimlette is a writer of vivid comical prose, whose first travel book appeared under the title At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig. For his second, he has followed… Read more
Latest blogs
- UKIP, Pierre Poujade and a political class that’s seen to be “out-of-touch”. Alex Massie
- Labour tries to defuse civil partnerships row – by backing government amendment Isabel Hardman
- Will civil partnerships kill the gay marriage bill? Isabel Hardman
- Edmund Burke – a writer one should always read Douglas Murray
- Tan Twan Eng interview: ‘I have no alternative but to write in English’ Stephen McEwen
- Eurovision was as hilarious as ever Rod Liddle
- Britain can now afford to send a man into space. Pity we can’t afford a proper navy Fraser Nelson
