Robert Falcon Scott, Journals: Scott’s Last Expedition | edited by Max Jones

If Scott had never made the geographical or scientific discoveries he did, someone else would have, but no one else could have written these journals. His achievements as a leader of two of the greatest expeditions to go to the Antarctic are undeniable, but it is his ability to make real the experience of human nature at the limits of its endurance, to articulate — at the moment of failure and disillusion — a sense of human possibilities transcending both, that is his greatest bequest to posterity.

‘Justice was Scott’s God,’ Cherry Garrard once wrote, and if there seems precious little chance in a Shackleton-obsessed age of him ever receiving his share, Max Jones’s scrupulously scholarly edition of his journals might do something to redress the balance. There is nobody who knows more about the Scott mythology than Jones does, and in unravelling the complex history of these journals and unpicking the editorial decisions of predecessors operating to different standards and pressures, he has laid bare a Scott who for all his flaws and shortcomings needs no defence from anyone. For too long Scott has been the preserve of the warring polar factions. With a bit of luck this book will give him back to the public he deserves.