Shackleton

Explorer. Leader. Legend.

By: Ranulph Fiennes

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The enthralling new biography of Ernest Shackleton by the world's greatest living explorer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

To write about Hell, it helps if you have been there.

In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice.

The disaster left Shackleton and his men alone at the frozen South Pole, fighting for their lives.

Their survival and escape is the most famous adventure in history.

Shackleton is an engaging new account of the adventurer, his life and his incredible leadership under the most extreme of circumstances.

Written by polar adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who followed in Shackleton's footsteps, he brings his own unique insights to bear on these infamous expeditions. Shackleton is both re-appraisal and a valediction, separating the man from the myth he has become.

©2021 Ranulph Fiennes (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Great Book The life of Sir Ernest Shackleton

Shackleton....Very informative especially if you're a fan or a Shackleton devotee as I am

Excellent story to complete our understanding of Shackleton

Excellent says it all: so great to get inside the whole story of this amazing man.

Slow start, amazing story

the narration is fantastic. Story has a bit of a slow start but the story overall is fascinating.

A Oft Repeated Story with Some New Insights

A few of the early reviewers seem put off buy Fiennes inserting himself in first person here and there. I found it mostly useful and was not an overused tool. There are so many other accounts of Shackleton's adventures that you couldn't really have a new book that just retold those. So I enjoy some of the details of his personal and financial struggles that I had not heard of before. Seemed that the fund raising was as arduous and the actual treks. Pleasant narrator and pace made one of the more enjoyable listens of the last few years.

Love the book

If you like attic exploration books this is one to listen to. Ranulph Flennes, is an explorer but he also has a great reading voice. Very pleasant to listen.

great book

great book, though some of the transitions about the Authors accounts and experiences was not perfectly done and a bit confusing.

Fantastic Listen!

Great story. Good narrator. Kept me engaged. Overall one of the better audiobooks I have listened to.

Watch BBC miniseries with Kenneth Branagh instead

"Me. me, this is all about me, Ranulph Fiennes, and how cold and courageous and miserable and hungry and ill and dementedly obsessed with Antarctica I am!"

Which author Fiennes reminds us, frequently, throughout his biography of a cracking explorer and certainly complicated Ernest Shackleton.

I gave up ... insane, really. From everything else I have read or viewed about Shackleton, I should have been riveted to the page, er, narrator. E Shackleton ticked so many boxes, none greater than his absolute passion and commitment to rescue his men from their grueling sojourn on Elephant Island.

I never got that far in this audiobook. I was hurled from accounts of early Antarctica explorations (the dog and pony consumption years) by R Fiennes hurling himself across the cruel, vast, freezing expanses many years later.

Fiennes seems utterly obsessed with constant self punishment and Antarctica is his whip and lash.

This audiobook is unfinished and I shall recommned instead the impeccable performance of Kenneth Branagh in the 2012 BBC miniseries ... DO!

Diversions not welcome

Well told, but the author’s diversions to tell his own story are out of place and unwelcome. They belong in a book himself.