The most famous sentence in exploration literature was penned by Captain Robert Falcon Scott as his final journal entry on 29 March 1912, the presumed day of his death: “For God’s sake, look after our people.” Two months earlier, his Terra Nova expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the landmark by 34 days. In appalling conditions, Scott’s team of five died on their return journey north, birthing a legend that remains deeply embedded in the British psyche – of fight-to-death heroism; of trying your damndest and being honourable in defeat.
Scott’s journal was recovered with his body in October 1912. Published as Scott’s Last Expedition a year later, it became a bestseller. Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s celebrated account of the mission, The Worst Journey in the World, followed in 1922, keeping the story of intrepidness in savage cold burning hot in the aftermath of the First World War. Inevitably, in the effulgence of the Allied victory in the Second World War, a film was made. Charles Frend’s Scott of the Antarctic starring John Mills came out in 1948, complete with a score by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Britain’s greatest living composer expanded on his thematic ideas to create his Seventh Symphony, nicknamed Sinfonia antartica, which he completed in 1952.
Content from our partners
