Franklin (eBook)

A very modern take on a most Victorian figure. It is both a biography of the man and an examination of the scientific ideals, as well as the commercial and political pressures, that contributed to the ill-fated decision to commence the expedition ... Lambert brilliantly recreates, not just what we know about the events of that expedition, but also how the myth of Franklin as a classic Victorian hero who died for the empire was stage-managed , not least by his widow ... it is to Lambert's credit that he rescues Franklin from his posthumous admirers, and presents here a complicated and interesting portrait of a man faced with impossible pressures. In Lambert's book, Franklin is not the man who discovers a largely useless geographical curiosity, but one who discivered the dark truth at the heart of the human condition - the savage will of the body to survive when the thin veneer of civilization has been stripped away.

Andrew Lambert's keenly researched biography interprets the public reaction [to the claims of cannibalism] as a clash between modern awareness of man's animal nature, soon to be endorsed by Darwin's The Origin of Species, and Victorian chivalric dreams ... The achievement of Lambert's biography is to put Franklin, for the first time, into this modern context of how to fund and co-ordinate big science ... the abundant material he gathers in his biography will convince most readers that Franklin did indeed set an example of nobility, heroism and self-sacrifice

The story is fascinating and Andrew Lambert is a good writer. His repairs to Franklin's reputation are done in a fair-minded way and with meticulous attention to detail ... if you've an interest in polar exploration, naval history or extreme survival (or, in this case, failure to survive) then it's well worth getting hold of.

This is a marvellous book by a splendid writer of the sea.

As Lambert's painstaking chronicle of the expedition emphasizes, despite the failure of the voyage, Franklin's disappearance became the focal point of all 19th-century Arctic exploration.

Many books have been written about Franklin, each of which imagines his fate differently. This latest, by Andrew Lambert, provides a useful summary of these theories, and presents evidence that shows how to expedition resorted to cannibalism before succumbing to starvation and scurvy. Primarily, however, it focuses on why Franklin went to the Arctic in the first place. According to Lambert, the Passage itself was of no importance; rather, Franklin went north in the name of the science of magnetism. This interesting thesis will bring fresh controversy to a much-debated subject.

'Lambert has worked hard to give a balanced view of a man first deified by opportunists and then vilified by revisionist biographers. He presents us with a vision of a decent, well-regarded officer ... it is an absorbing story, and Lambert tells it well ... the book is intriguing and readable ... Lambert is to be commended for being aware of the modern significance of Franklin's expedition.'

This biography does not debunk him, but it does shift the emphasis ... splendid