Book cover: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The Worst Journey in the World

Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The worst journey was not the fatal one: it was a midwinter trek for penguin eggs at seventy below.

Cherry-Garrard went south with Scott in 1910 and came back to write the best book anyone has written about polar exploration. The title refers not to the fatal march but to a midwinter side-trip he made with two others to collect emperor penguin eggs, in darkness, at seventy below, with their teeth cracking from the cold. He was among the party that found the bodies. He never got over it, and the book knows it.

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Cal Flyn

Author and Journalist

Often they, like Cherry-Garrard, are beautiful writers, or, at the very least, recording strange and beautiful natural phenomena, which can be utterly bewitching to encounter through prose.

Interview · July 2026

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