There was a time that Meredith Hooper was perhaps best known as an award-winning author of children's books, both fiction and non-fiction. In more recent years, however, she has concentrated her efforts on aspects of Antarctic wildlife, history, and environment, and has turned progressively towards well-researched books for an adult readership with a knowledgeable background regarding the Antarctic. The best known of her recent works was her study of climate change and its impact upon the Adélie penguin population in the vicinity of the United States research base at Palmer Station, off the Antarctic Peninsula (Hooper Reference Hooper2007).

Hooper's latest effort has turned to the history of the ‘Heroic Age’ of Antarctic exploration, with a tale of the remarkable adventures and accomplishments of the Northern Party on Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition. It is appropriate, with the many events and publications around the world celebrating the centenary of Scott's Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913), that one of them concentrates on this frequently overlooked or under-emphasised part of the expedition. Not only were the scientific investigations carried out by the men of the Northern Party highly significant, but the six members of the party established a record of remarkable endurance in living through what was almost certainly the most horrific winter ever spent by men in the Antarctic.

The story of the Northern Party actually began with its incarnation as the ‘Eastern Party,’ the group that Scott intended to have landed at King Edward VII Land on the far side of the Great Ice Barrier in order to conduct scientific investigations and geographical exploration in that little-known region. But unfortunately, nowhere could be found to make a safe landing, and Lieutenant Victor Campbell, who was in charge of the party, reluctantly turned Terra Nova towards Balloon Inlet, the small break in the Barrier where a brief landing was made at the beginning of the Discovery Expedition (1901–1904). They found, as Ernest Shackleton already had on his British Antarctic Expedition (1907–1909), that such a place no longer existed due to the calving of the ice shelf, and instead they sailed into a broader bay that Shackleton had named the Bay of Whales. Here, to the shock of all aboard Terra Nova, they spied the famous polar ship Fram, and realised that they had come across the base of the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who, like Scott, was intent on reaching the South Pole.

After visiting Amundsen at Framheim, Campbell and his men returned to Scott's main base at Cape Evans to report the discovery of Amundsen's expedition. They then proceeded to Cape Adare on the northern tip of Victoria Land, where they established a base at the site previously occupied by the members of Carsten Borchgrevink's Southern Cross Expedition (1898–1900). When Terra Nova sailed north, the party at Cape Adare consisted of Campbell, Naval Surgeon Murray Levick, the geologist Raymond Priestley, Petty Officer George Abbott, Petty Officer Frank Browning, and Able Seaman Harry Dickason. In the next year, they lived through intense weather conditions but nevertheless carried out a number of scientific investigations. However, their planned geographical forays were hampered by exceedingly difficult sledging.

In January 1912, Terra Nova returned and collected the six men, who were then dropped off at Evans Coves in Terra Nova Bay for what was supposed to be a period of about six weeks. However, the ship was unable to return for them due to a heavy build-up of sea ice, and the men were left to fend for themselves with few rations in reserve. They eventually cut a small (3.6 × 2.7 m) subterranean chamber out of the ice on the edge of a granite outcrop they called Inexpressible Island. There, with no natural light and a ceiling too low to allow anyone to stand upright, all six men slept, cooked, ate, and spent their waking hours. Most of their diet was seal and penguin, which also provided blubber for their cooking stove, and Priestley carefully divvied up the other rations. Showing remarkable inner strength, the men managed to continue in these gruesome conditions for more than six months without losing hope. Browning and Dickason both suffered dreadfully from enteritis, and each was fortunate to live through the period.

In late spring they decided to try reach Cape Evans by making a forced march down the Victoria Land coastline some 200 geographical miles (370 km) in a planned 40 days, a daunting trek made all the more difficult by the fact that each was physically weakened by the time in the cave. They benefited immeasurably from finding a food cache at Cape Roberts, and then another at Butter Point, and they eventually reached Cape Evans in mid-November 1912 to find most of the members of the expedition gone, having set out to find a trace of Scott and the members of the Polar Party.

Hooper tells this story with an impressive combination of flair and scholarship. She took an interesting approach to the tale by deciding to tell it as the participants would themselves have seen the events, that is, by staying with the story as they experienced it and avoiding putting it into its place in history, which was only later determined in light of the events surrounding the deaths of the Polar Party. ‘My aim has been to avoid hindsight and, as far as I can, judgements,’ she wrote. ‘To let the expedition rebalance. Freed from the burden of the tragedy that descended on the Polar party . . . the story of six of Scott's other heroes assumes its proper place’ (page 5). It is an effective way to approach the story, but one that brings with it a few unusual aspects, such as Hooper's regular reference to this part of the expedition as the ‘Eastern Party.’ This is, of course, how its members thought of and referred to their part of the expedition until after their return to civilisation, but it is intriguingly different for those of later generations, who have always thought of Campbell's command as the Northern Party.

The greatest value of this book is that it is the first telling of this tale making extensive use of all of the extant diaries from the members of the Northern Party. The story has, of course, been told before, but the classic account of it (Priestley Reference Priestley1914) took into account primarily the observations and attitudes of Priestley, the only scientist on this part of the expedition. Harry King later made a valuable contribution by editing the diary of Campbell (King Reference King1988), but, again, it told the story primarily as perceived by the party's leader, who was something of a naval martinet. And while the most recent publication about the Northern Party gave a new viewpoint by emphasising Levick's diaries (Lambert Reference Lambert2002), it continued the pattern by limiting its point of view to primarily that of one of the three officers in the party.

Hooper, on the other hand, included in her research a careful reading of the diaries of Abbott, Browning, and Dickason, which are all held at the Scott Polar Research Institute. By being the first to use these diaries to give a voice to the members of the lower deck, she has not only expanded the knowledge of the events encountered by the Northern Party, but had broadened the interpretation and understanding of this entire segment of Scott's last expedition. This makes The longest winter a significant addition to the literature about the exploration of the Antarctic. As it is also a greatly enjoyable read, it should find a place on the bookshelf of every polar enthusiast.