About the Book: Empire at the Edge of the World: Endurance and Madness in the
High Arctic
A fabulous tale of ambition, madness and catastrophe William Dalrymple
One mans lust for empire sent a team of adventurers into the Arctic-only one
came back.
1913, the Arctic Circle. Charismatic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson is obsessed
with a frozen speck of land in the Siberian Arctic: Wrangel Island. Believing
that whoever possesses it will control the future-air routes, resources, even
the balance of power in the northern hemisphere, he takes an impossible gamble.
Dispatching a small, ill-equipped venture to stake a frozen colony in Britains
name, it