Wild Places
I was in a second-hand bookshop in Lavenham in Suffolk in 1989 when I picked up a copy of Scott's Last Expedition, abridged for children. I was on a cycling tour of East Anglia with my wife and daughter and the book made for perfect evening reading. And it was a gateway book for me into the vast and freezing realms of polar literature. I collected many books by members of Scott's expeditions, and soon moved on to Shackleton. I'll mention a few of my favourites, but before I do it occurred to me earlier that I couldn't think of any children's fiction concerning polar exploration. Then I thought, well, it would be a bit hard to convincingly get children to the Poles without adult supervision. And then I realised that I'd just finished a book that did so, in its way. That book is Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday, and though the North Pole that is the object of the adventure is not the real Pole, the adventure on the frozen lake is almost as tense and frightening as some of the books below.
Scott's diaries are essential reading, as is Shackleton's South, but best of all is Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World, which is a perfect pick-me-up in the middle of a long, cold winter if you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself. There is always someone worse off than you are, unless your tent has blown away in the middle of a blizzard, miles from any chance of help in the depths of the Polar winter.
Directly below the shelves of Polar books for many years were books about Tibet and the Himalayas. I am betting that Peter Dickinson had a shelf of these, too, because his Carnegie winner, Tulku, seems to be partly inspired by that literature. I only read Tulku recently but I thought it was a terrific read with a fantastic sense of place and some great characters. With a lot of these Carnegie winners I've read them with a slight sense of detachment, but with Tulku I was completely involved, just as if I was reading Dick Francis, and I'm really grateful because the book sent me back to those other accounts of Tibet and central Asia which I hadn't looked at for years.
All I'll say about Tulku itself (I wouldn't want to spoil it for you) is that it's set in China and Tibet at the time of the Boxer rising in the late nineteenth century and contains bandits, battles and Tibetan lamas. And all of these, as well as wonderfully evocative descriptions of landscapes and people, can be found in two of my favourite books from that Tibetan shelf I mentioned. The first of these is Tibetan Venture by André Guibaut. Guibaut set out in May 1940 with his companion, Louis Victor Liotard to 'explore the territory of the Ngolo-Setas and the upper basin of the Tong.'
Guibaut idolised Liotard, but from the very first page we know that Liotard was killed by Tibetan bandits on September 10, 1940. The entire book is doom-laden in an extraordinary way. The two explorers don't quite trust their porters and as the expedition proceeds various sinister strangers are encountered, sinister horsemen are seen at dusk on hilltops, sinister villagers refuse them hospitality, and their saddlebags, as seems well known to the entire population of the region, are heavily loaded with the money they need to pay their way. Not only that, but Paris has fallen. This is appalling, especially as they are mapping these remote regions for the glory of France.
It is almost a relief, after pages of 'little did Liotard know that this was the last sunset he would ever see/the last word he would ever write/the last observation he would ever take/the last word he would ever speak . . .' when the bandits finally attack. And when they do their poor quality gunpowder and the thin air make the bullets fizz slowly in a surreal way. Liotard is killed, and Guibaut breaks down. He eventually makes his way to safety but ends the book with this reflection on the 'priests or scientists, peasants or aristocrats' who contributed to this French imperial adventure in Asia. 'All these Frenchmen have given their lives for an ideal, and the apparent uselessness of their endeavour makes the very greatness of these men and of the nation who bore them.' This would serve almost as well for an epitaph on the British polar expeditions.
All those men! All that failure! When Peter Dickinson started writing Tulku this happened: '...the book changed course almost as soon as I'd started. The plant-hunter was just about to appear on the scene. Theodore was standing on the edge of the ravine, looking back at the smoking ruins of the settlement. He heard the plod of hooves on the road behind him. At that point I said "This guy's going to be a snore- I think I'll make him a woman."'
And so to one of the most wonderful books I know, The Gobi Desert by Mildred Cable with Francesca French. 'After living for more than twenty years in the province of Shanxi in North China, I took the old trade-route and, with my companions Eva and Francesca French, trekked north-west past the Barrier of the Great Wall and into the country beyond. For many years we travelled over the Desert of the Gobi and among its oases as itinerant missionaries, and we came to know the country and its people intimately.' So begins the book. Eva French had been the first of the three to travel to China. She was a wild and free spirit. Growing up in Geneva she loved to party and devoured Russian literature. She pronounced herself to have been 'the fervid nihilist, the incipient Communist, the embryonic Bolshevist.' But she experienced a moment of religious enlightenment in a small country church after the family had returned to England, and in 1893 travelled to China to become a missionary.
Eva was caught up in the Boxer rebellion and feared dead, but in 1901, when Mildred Cable arrived in China, it was Eva who greeted her. Many years later Eva's sister Francesca joined them, and thereafter the three were inseparable. They were also the absolute antithesis of those male explorers, travelling simply with few possessions and with a profound respect for all they met. I like to think that something of their spirit found its way into Peter Dickinson's Mrs Jones, the plant-collector. Here's the conclusion of the Prologue to The Gobi Desert:
'Once the spirit of the desert had caught us it lured us on and we became learners in its severe school. The solitudes provoked reflection, the wide space gave us the right sense of proportion and the silences forbade triviality. The following record of what we saw and found in the Desert of Gobi may help others to appreciate its unique charm.'
Originally published on ABBA September 2022
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