The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was perhaps the most ambitious, elaborate and confident of all the British attempts to master the South Pole. Like the others it ended in disaster, with the Endeavour first trapped and then crushed to pieces in the ice and its crew trapped in the Antarctic, seemingly doomed to a slow and horrible death....

\\\"We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.\\\" In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set out on an 1,800-mile trek across Antarctica. During the three-year expedition, his team overcame shipwreck, treacherous glaciers, and a bitterly hostile climate....

For thousands of years artists have played a special role in the human quest to understand anatomy, health and disease; this book celebrates their creativity and inquisitiveness using little-seen, stunning imagery from one of the worlds greatest collections....