I May Be Some Time

'A truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination.' Jan Morris, The Times 'Shot through with crystalline brilliance.' Washington Post 'Fascinating.' Sunday Times When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the national imagination. Everyone remembers the doomed Captain Oates's last words: 'I'm just going outside, and I may be some time.' Francis Spufford's celebrated and prize-winning history shows how Scott's death was the culmination of a national enchantment with vast empty spaces, the beauty of untrodden snow, and perilous journeys to the end of the earth. Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the Banff Mountain Book Prize.

Francis Spufford was born in 1964. He is the author of five celebrated books of non-fiction. The most recent, Unapologetic, has been translated into three languages; the one before, Red Plenty, into nine. He has been longlisted or shortlisted for prizes in science writing, historical writing, political writing, theological writing, and writing 'evoking the spirit of place'. His first novel. Golden Hill, was published in 2016 and won the Costa First Novel Award. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches creative writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge., Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (1997), is the author of five highly-praised books of non-fiction. The first, I May Be Some Time, won three literary prizes, and helped create a small new academic field, dedicated to the cultural history of Antarctica. The second, The Child That Books Built, gave Neil Gaiman 'the peculiar feeling that there was now a book I didn't need to write'. Backroom Boys was called 'as nearly perfect as makes no difference' by the Daily Telegraph; Red Plenty has been translated into nine languages, including Polish, Russian and Estonian; Unapologetic is richer in expletives than any previous work of religious advocacy, and is currently shortlisted for the Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. He has also been shortlisted or longlisted for prizes in writing about science, history, politics and 'the spirit of place'. He teaches at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge with his wife and younger daughter. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.