Roland Huntford
The Icemen Cometh
Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage
By Glyn Williams
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 439pp £25 order from our bookshop
In British Arctic exploration, the hunt for the Northwest Passage became a repository of sentimental heroics, which masked its prosaic origin. It began as the search for a short cut from the Atlantic to the Pacific through North America in order to break the Spanish and Portuguese grip on trade with the Orient along southerly routes. Eventually it became a fabled quest. It produced a literature of its own, to which Arctic Labyrinth is the most recent addition.
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
Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Get highlights from the new issue and selected archive articles, as well as exclusive competitions and subscription offers delivered straight to your inbox.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freenewsletter
'Some Labour MPs who were shocked by Corbyn’s rise behaved appallingly ... Not only were they disloyal; they also had no coherent strategy for removing Corbyn or an alternative left-of-centre project.'
@steverichards14 https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-accidental-leader
'As readers, we are immersed in Tambu’s self-alienation, at one and the same time reached out to and held at arm’s length.'
@ellekeboehmer weighs up Tsitsi Dangarembga's Booker-shortlisted novel, 'This Mournable Body'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-tambu-did-next