{"product_id":"books-i-may-be-some-time-by-francis-spufford","title":"I May Be Some Time","description":"I May Be Some Time is a richly engrossing cultural history of our obsession with ice, Eskimos and polar exploration.  When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the national imagination.  Despite wars and social change, despite recent debunking, it is still there.  Everyone remembers the doomed explorers' last words - 'I'm just going outside, and I may be some time' - and history is what you can remember.  Conventional histories of polar exploration trace the laborious expeditions across the map, dwelling on the proper techniques of ice-navigation and sledge-travel.  But we rarely ask what the explorers thought they were doing, or why they did these insane things.  I May Be Some Time is about the poles as they have been perceived, dreamed, even desired.  It explores the myth as myth, showing how Scott's death was the culmination to a long-running national enchantment with perilous journeys to the ends of the earth.  'The thrills of desolation, of icy beauty, of challenge, of human courage, of comradeship . . . I May Be Some Time is a truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination.' Jan Morris, The Times","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53672494924049,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780571218653.jpg?v=1781519960","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/books-i-may-be-some-time-by-francis-spufford","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}