A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the race between Dr Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary to be the first to reach the South Pole.
On January 21, 1958, Sir Vivian (then Dr) Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary met at the South Pole amid a worldwide blaze of controversy. It was the half way point of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition's first successful crossing of the Frozen Continent - but Hillary and his team, driving modified farm tractors, had made a 'hellbent dash to the Pole' (Hillary's words) five weeks earlier, pipping Fuchs and his team in their more sophisticated Snocats.
Geoffrey Lee Martin was covering the infamous expedition for The Daily Telegraph and The New Zealand Herald and had unfettered access to its participants and personalities. The passage of time allows him to give a much more lively and informal insight into the personal relationships and conflicts, as well as post-colonial rivalry, than was possible at the time.
Hellbent for the Pole is an engaging, often irreverent, account of the expedition, which is illustrated by many dramatic and now historic colour and black and white photographs taken by the author.
About Geoffrey Lee Martin
Geoffrey Lee Martin is a journalist who, in 1958, covered Dr Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary's infamous expedition to the South Pole for The Daily Telegraph and The New Zealand Herald. For much of the time he was the only journalist with the expedition, and he took a large number of truly remarkable personal photographs. Looking back through the photographs recently, Lee Martin was struck by how vividly they captured the expedition, and decided to put them together with his own witty and fascinating behind-the-scenes account.