Christopher Ondaatje
Meeting the Unknown
Cassell’s Tales of Endurance
By Fergus Fleming
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 518pp £20
There have already been two good anthologies on exploration in the last three or four years: Travels, Explorations and Empires: Writings from the Era of Imperial Expansion 1770–1835 (eight volumes, 2002), edited by Tim Fulford and Peter J Kitson; and The Faber Book of Exploration (2001–2), edited by Benedict Allen. Both these books offer sensitive and thought-provoking discussions of the writings of the world’s greatest explorers, as well as providing us with a wide selection of the writings themselves. In both cases it must have been difficult for the editors to make their selections. Now, however, Fergus Fleming (author of the best-selling Barrow’s Boys) has written Cassell’s Tales of Endurance, a collection of over forty stories of heroism, resolution, and the will to survive. He has divided these tales between the Age of Reconnaissance, the Age of Inquiry, and the Age of Endeavour, ‘equating roughly to the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial eras’. Each of the three sections is prefaced with an essay by the author which introduces aspects of the age and identifies themes in the stories that follow. They are worth the price of the book alone.
Fleming has set out to construct ‘a sort-of history of exploration’. He starts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ‘with the birth of exploration literature’, and ends in the 1920s, ‘when the combustion engine transformed the raw nature of the quest’. Again, the choice as to which explorers to include
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk