‘We longed keenly for the day when we could begin this march, the last great adventure in this history of South Polar exploration … ’

As war clouds darkened over Europe in 1914, a party led by veteran explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to make the first crossing of the entire Antarctic continent via the Pole.

But their initial optimism was short-lived as ice floes closed around their ship, Endurance, gradually crushing her to death and marooning twenty-eight men on the polar ice.

Alone in the world’s most unforgiving environment, Shackleton and his team began a brutal quest for survival.

As the story of their journey across treacherous seas and a wilderness of glaciers and snow fields unfolds, the scale of their courage and heroism becomes movingly clear.

‘One of the most harrowing survival stories of all time.’ - Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm

Introduction by FERGUS FLEMING Photographs by FRANK HURLEY