Candour in an explorer is to be applauded. ‘For me,’ writes Erling Kagge, ‘cannibalism is a kind of necessary evil … I would certainly eat a friend who was already dead if the alternative was to starve to death. It would of course be terrible … but I think my companions would understand.’

Kagge, the latest in Norway’s long roll call of intrepid pioneers, is a thoughtful man. In The North Pole, he interweaves a history of the North Pole and efforts to locate it with musings on what motivates explorers like him. In 1990, Kagge and Børge Ousland, a naval friend with a polar pedigree, became the first people to reach the North Pole on skis, without dogs, depots and ‘motorized aids’ – and the first to get back to tell the story. For this they did require ‘motorized aid’. Thanks to the meticulous planning that Kagge holds essential for success, he and Ousland were whisked off the ice cap, still uneaten, by a small plane.

In the late-19th century American explorers resumed the hitherto mainly British search for the North Pole. Financial backing came from the press baron James Gordon Bennett Jr, who had previously funded Henry Stanley’s search for Dr Livingstone. Miraculous encounters sold newspapers; sensational failures could sell more. The thirty-strong crew of