I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination

by Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford explores the British obsession with polar exploration in a book that Jan Morris, writing in The Times, called, "A truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination . . ." The title, a last quote from one explorer to his party as he left their tent never to return, embodies the danger and mystery that fueled the romantic allure of the poles and, subsequently, the British imagination.

Far from being a conventional history of polar exploration, I May Be Some Time attempts to understand what was going on in the minds of the polar explorers as they headed toward destinies like Terra Nova. Serving up a heady brew of Captain Perry, Jane Eyre, gastronomic obsessions with iced desserts, and the daily lives of Eskimos, Spufford treats the reader to one of the most satisfying and imaginative contemporary works dealing with exploration and human need.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Travel, British Literature, Adventure, Victorian, Biography

388 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 1996

About the author

UPDATE: I have a complete draft of the sequel to Nonesuch, ARCADY, and I have solid hopes of it coming out next year.

Officially, I was a writer of non-fiction for the first half of my career, and I certainly enjoyed scraping up against the stubborn, resistant, endlessly interesting surface of the real world. I like awkwardness, things that don't fit, things that put up a struggle against being described. But when I was excited by what I was writing about, what I wanted to do with my excitement was always to tell a story. So every one of my non-fiction books borrowed techniques from the novel, and contained sections where I came close to behaving like a novelist. The chapter retelling the story of Captain Scott's last Antarctic expedition at the end of "I May Be Some Time", for example, or the thirty-page version of the gospel story in "Unapologetic". It wasn't a total surprise that in 2010 I published a book, "Red Plenty", which was a cross between fiction and documentary, or that afterwards I completed my crabwise crawl towards the novel with the honest-to-goodness entirely-made-up "Golden Hill". This was a historical novel about eighteenth century New York written like, well, an actual eighteenth century novel: hyperactive, stuffed with incident, and not very bothered about genre or good taste. It was elaborate, though. It was about exceptional events, and huge amounts of money, and good-looking people talking extravagantly in a special place. Nothing wrong with any of that: I'm an Aaron Sorkin fan and a Joss Whedon fan, keen on dialogue that whooshes around like a firework display. But those were the ingredients of romance, and there were other interesting things to tell stories about, so my next novel "Light Perpetual" in 2021 was deliberately plainer, about the lives that five London children might have had if they hadn't been killed in 1944 by a German rocket. Ordinary lives, in theory; except that there are no ordinary lives, if you look closely enough. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Then in 2023 I returned to strong forms of story, and to plotting more like "Golden Hill", with a noir crime novel called "Cahokia Jazz", set in the 1922 of a different timeline, where a metropolis full of Native Americans stood on the banks of the Mississippi. I was aiming for something like a classic black and white movie, except one you never saw, because it came from another history than our own. It won the Sidewise Award for alternate history. And now (2025/6) I've written a historical fantasy, "Nonesuch", set during the London Blitz, where as well as German bombs the protagonist Iris needs to deal with time-travelling fascists, and the remnants of Renaissance magic, preserved in the statues of the burning city. As writers of fantasy, I like C S Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, John Crowley, Tamsyn Muir, Guy Gavriel Kay, Katherine Addison. If you like them, you may like this.

Biography: I was born in 1964, the child of two historians. I'm married to the Dean of an Anglican cathedral in eastern England, I have two daughters, and I teach writing at Goldsmiths College, London.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the non-fiction books about polar exploration that I’d read prior to this one were straightforward travelogue-slash-adventure narratives that dwelt on the immediate context of the expedition recounted and the personalities involved. ‘I May Be Some Time’ is a very different sort of book, although it took me a stupidly long time to realise just how much so. Spufford pulls together an idiosyncratic cultural history, not of the expeditions themselves so much as the context in which they took place. Successive chapters discuss in great detail such themes as the nature of the sublime in popular perceptions of the Arctic, the role of expedition wives as patient yet proactive guardians of their husbands’ reputations, and how attitudes towards the Inuit became more overtly racist during the 19th century. The penultimate chapter was my favourite. In it, Spufford embarks upon a magnificent, grandiloquent, and sweeping account of what it meant to be Edwardian. This combines such delightful ephemera as the use of ‘North Pole’ as rhyming slang for ‘arsehole’ with insights like this:

For some time British culture had leant towards admiring strength. Self-congratulation played a part here: finding itself on top of the world, as it seemed, Edwardian Britain liked to remind itself of hierarchies and pecking orders. So did the simplified ‘Darwinism’ (actually no such thing) that drew parallels between the struggle of species for survival and the struggle of human nations and individuals against one another. Maybe Nietzsche even had some influence, for his ideas about the ‘will to power’ and the superman were just beginning to be popularised in Britain by a few converts. But Edwardian enthusiasm for toughness, tough tactics, and toughed moral fibres was very widely diffused. They were less willing than mid-Victorians to recognise the delicate and ambiguous kinds of mental endurance, but they admired strength of character.

The final chapter is entirely different, a brief fictionalised account of Scott’s ill-fated final expedition. This would jar in the hands of a lesser writer, but Spufford carries it off beautifully. The book then ends on a personal note, as he recounts a trip to McMurdo Base in the Antarctic to see the memorial to Scott put up by surviving members of his expedition. It’s a moving epilogue that is somehow more powerful for all the dense and elaborate edifice of cultural and social significance that prior chapters have built around it. For all the wider meanings and significances that it evokes, Scott’s journey to the North Pole was also a tragic, unnecessary waste of lives.

I found the combination of the three elements; thematic history, fictionalised narrative, and personal travelogue; added up to a ponderous yet profound whole. The extended quotations from Victorian sources drag at times, yet Spufford’s infectious fascination with the subject always shines through. I found the reflections on Edwardian society before WWI especially thought-provoking, as I hadn’t previously read much analysis of how that brief era contrasted with Victorian age that preceded it. I liked Spufford’s observation that the Victorians had to deal with such a barrage of technological and scientific developments that their prevailing attitude was one of doubt and uncertainty. The Edwardians, Spufford suggests, had no such comfort with ambiguity and exhibited a callous certainty about the order of things, until WWI smashed that assurance into smithereens. Spufford recounts an anecdote from 1916 I’d heard before that has lost none of its succinct bite:

As soon as the three scarecrow-like travellers had established who they were to Mr Sorlle, the manager, and what they were doing wandering through his whaling station frightening children, “Tell me, when was the war over?” Shackleton asked. “The war is not over,” he answered. “Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad.”

There is also a madness to arrogant and overconfident amateurs claiming ownership of snowy wastes, based on notions of adventure and empire. The appeal of said snowy wastes cannot be denied, however. Spufford thoroughly delineates the misguided romantic and imperialist subtexts of Scott’s doomed endeavour, while also acknowledging the force that the Antarctic's sere beauty exerts on the imagination then and now. ‘I May Be Some Time’ is a carefully researched and compelling patchwork of a book, well worth the close attention that it demands.

[Mae · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am sooooo emotional about apsley cherry garrard

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at the culture surrounding English polar exploration. I thought it was written well, but it's also dense, which may not suit readers who like their nonfiction on the breezier side.

My favorite chapter was on the concept of the sublime and how gothic novelists used that aesthetic in ways that didn't quite line up with expected gender roles.

[Marla Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled to get into this a bit I think because it’s been a few years since I was at uni so I haven’t read much theory recently, but well worth the effort!! I especially found the parts on gender and the shift from victorian to edwardian attitudes towards polar exploration so fascinating

[Madeleine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hard one to categorise, and so meandering in terms of content that it probably depends what you were looking for in this 'Ice and the English Imagination'. I felt the strongest chapters were the ones in its first half on the sublime, Romantic literature, and the earlier expeditions, especially the down the (literal) rabbit hole digression on Symmes' Hollow Earth stuff, I could have happily read loads more on that! On the other hand I felt like Spufford was eager to finally get to Scott - which I would not have been opposed to except for the odd sudden switch to present tense for a more fictionalised account just for the Terra Nova section. Hit and miss, but worth the read.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I MAY BE SOME TIME: ICE AND THE ENGLISH IMAGINATION is a fascinating account of the effects of polar exploration on British thinking from the 18th through 20th centuries.

Among the ideas that affected the English imagination are the power and sublimity of nature, heroism and disaster, the reputations of lost explorers, and the characteristics of native peoples.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of ideas, and one need not be a fan of polar exploration to enjoy it.

[Joe Tristram · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are haunted by the Scott polar expedition, this is the book for you. I now feel that I know, in some detail, the psychological background to those doomed men. Most of Francis Spufford's is a trawl through the literature of the nineteenth century where it references polar exploration. There's a lot! I had no idea is was such an obsession. Even Jane Eyre was influenced by its gloom. And in the last two chapters we relive that terrible journey, and further. It's all worthwhile.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

i couldn't get far in this book. the topic was fascinating, but it was so tediously written that it just wasn't gonna happen. worth skimming or lookin for specific topics, but definitely not a cover to cover for me.

[Chris Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic, but felt like it was written by a less than enthusiastic writer. I guess I skim-read it! Another reader has suggested that it may be too academic, and I'd go along with that, in my case anyway. Some interesting points along the way but too little on Scott.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Romantic vocabulary, and Romantic hopes and horrors, remained important ways of negotiating the perceptual maze of the polar regions. They helped; they answered to the experience of light and motion, dark and stillness. They described the shock of finding nature other than you thought it was. [p. 93]

Recently the subtitle has changed to 'The Story Behind the Antarctic Tragedy of Captain Scott', but I prefer the original, which is much more accurate: 'Ice and the English Imagination'.

Spufford's first book is a social and cultural history of the great age of British polar exploration, from the Admiralty's push for Arctic expeditions after the Napoleonic Wars to the Edwardian explorations of Scott and Shackleton. He explores the Romantic notion of the sublime, the attitudes of the women left behind, and -- with compassion -- the vainglorious dreams and arrogant incompetence of the explorers themselves.

There is a vast amount in this book, and I read it very slowly, enjoying the cadences of Spufford's prose, his gentle mockery of Victorian ideas and ideals, and his clarity. The final chapter of the book, a fictionalised account of Scott's solitary death, moved me to tears but also exasperated me: as Spufford suggests, there's a sense of 'a fatalism so profound it became a kind of violence, a spiteful refusal to look out for themselves' (p. 346). Scott had opium tablets but did not take them to ease his passing. Instead, only 12 miles from the nearest camp, he lay with his dead companions and died in agony.

Spufford also explores perceptions of the Inuit ('Eskimos') and the ways in which their existence complicated the narratives of exploration: the Arctic was not, after all, pristine and empty, and some people did know how to survive there. Not, of course, that a British explorer would take advice from the locals... And he writes about the divisions of social class on board pole-bound ships: "the tasks [the officers] do on board are so far beneath their class’s roster of possible destinies that doing them does not feel like any conceivable backward step, it feels like a holiday" (p. 302). Polar exploration, and the myths around it, had a vast influence on everyday culture. For instance, I learnt that 'north', previously slang for 'clever', came to mean 'strong' in terms of drinks. 'Too far north', once slang for 'too clever by half', came to mean 'desperately, incapably drunk – ... hopelessly lost up there in the ultima Thule of booze.' (p. 237).

It’s too big, too silent, too cold. It’s all too much. ‘Coo-ee!’ shouts Ponting. Pause. Moonstruck immensity. ‘Coo-ee!’ replies the Barne Glacier. A perfect echo! [p. 326]

Read because: it's been on my wishlist for ages, and I have a long-standing interest in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. This was my bedtime read for well over a month: the cadences of Spufford's prose, and the lengthy excerpts from Victorian accounts of expeditions, were very soothing.

[Jay Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a lot of information packed into this book about the human obsession with polar exploration. I was completely immersed in the poetic language Spufford uses to describe the landscape of the Arctic and Antarctic and it was interesting to read about how the English, in Victorian times, became enthralled with the idea of conquering the frozen land.

Midway through the book I had to put it aside for a little over a year, but when I returned, it was as fascinating as I remembered it. My favorite parts were the description of Sir John Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage and the ordeal of Robert Falcon Scott in his quest to be the first to travel to the South Pole. I did not know that Franklin's wife played such a large role in his expedition, although I was aware of her efforts to find him when he disappeared. The one criticism I have of the book is that the author wanders off into everyday life in England, the roles of servants and women, and sociological commentary, which do not have much to do with polar exploration or explorers. I found it an irritating and very lengthy section which I was eager to get through so I could once again find the subject matter promised by the author. But as I read quickly through those parts there were some portions I had to stop and read more closely because they piqued my interest. The last part of the book brought back all the colorful and literary language, the trials and heartache of Scott's journey, and the final moments eight months after the death of Scott and his companions, when the search party from Cape Evans uncovers the tent and discovers the bodies. I can't really consider this a spoiler as the results of the Scott expedition are well known.

Having just finished another book about an expedition near Baffin Island in the late 1930's where the men were immersed in the Inuit way of living and travelling, I was struck by the contrast of how little the Scott party learned from the natives (probably because they regarded the Inuit as inferior to the English), and how they persisted in using clothing, food, and animals not suited for the conditions. Ponies! I can't imagine what he was thinking.

The various references to poets and novelists of the era opened up another dimension of thought on polar exploration. Tying together the thoughts of popular books, poetry, and the collecting of souvenirs gave the concept of English fascination with the subject a well-rounded and multi-faceted view that I found particularly enjoyable. There is a select bibliography and index which also helps reference back to various points in the book. Part non-fiction and part embellished romanticism, I could easily see going back to this book time and again.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a rich exploration of the cultural significance to the late Victorian and Edwardian English of the various efforts at north and south polar explorations, from the lost Franklin Arctic expedition in the early 1800s to the doomed Scott race to the South Pole. Spufford covers a lot of territory: the way the blankness and challenge to human efforts posed by Arctic wastes was translated in the British mind to an awed appreciation for the sublime, perceived as the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the overwhelming strangeness of the northern regions; the way Lady Jane Franklin positioned herself as an immovable force in British society as she continued to press the government, the Navy and public opinion to continue to search for her missing husband, becoming a cultural and political force in the process (though she was against the suffrage movement); the way Eskimos became an exotic tribe, perceived as humans at an earlier stage of development, and so worth both anthropological study and popular trivialization; and the psychology of the Scott polar expedition, as his men displayed all that was deemed right about British masculine endeavor, facing the most formidable obstacles with good-natured camaraderie, even as they swallowed their growing disenchantment with Scott and got on each others' nerves, but never letting their true feelings get in the way of their grand mission, as stupid and pointless as it was.
A most interesting approach to the much-studied history of polar exploration, focusing on how the English traditions of stiff-upper-lipism gave cultural import to what was, ultimately, a useless expenditure of money, time and human life. Very well written, and thoughtful in its interpretations of the facts.
I will remember the concept of the sublime as overwhelming the human imagination, offering beauty and dread at the same time. I will remember Lady Jane and her decades-long efforts to find her husband (even Thoreau followed the story), and how she captured the public imagination almost more than her husband did. I will remember the way the poor Eskimos (a corrupt name; Inuit is how they are referred to now) became a pop-cultural amusement. I will remember that some critics of the Franklin expedition wondered how it was that the English crew, trapped in the ice, starved to death in a land where the Inuits lived hardy, well-fed lives. They starved because they refused to live as the Inuit did, the same way that Scott refused to use dogs in Antactica, sure that ponies would be better draft animals, and unwilling to apply to his own purposes what the Inuit had long understood as necessary for survival and movement in that bleak environment.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book defies simple characterization. It's history, but also literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology. There were polar explorers among the British, and the book tells about them. But it's more of a painting than a scientific illustration. What narratives were carried back, who read them, what the narratives said about the culture of both writers and readers? The section on Symmes is pretty fascinating to someone living in a world today where the internet magnifies every crackpot. Symmes assumed "you only had to prove your theory was not impossible, and then it became the responsibility of others to disprove it if they could." Right on the money! Published in 1997. Alex Jones would not come out with his statements about Sandy Hook for another 15 years. I liked finding out that sailors would open pubs and name them after whatever exotic place they'd been. Spufford's digression on differences between the Victorians and the Edwardians was pretty interesting. As a writer he can take on the cadences of the time period he writes about, and several parts of this book were no exception. I liked the "clangour" of London, and the photographer Ponting shouting "Coo-ee" at a wall of ice - a Britishism like the American "yoo hoo" - a perfect echo! perfectly rendered tongue in cheek, like many other vignettes in the book. Scott's wife, the sculptor! Priceless. I found the entire last chapter Spufford sculpts about Scott pretty fascinating, after having read Cherry's account, and after Spufford had laid so much groundwork on the society that begat Scott. There's also just some really nice writing: "Scott…heads into the Antarctic night alone. Out he goes past Teddy Evans' old survey-points on the sea-ice, dubbed Sardine and Shark and other fishy S-names, towards Inaccessible Island. The ice rings sound and solid, the surface is 'the best possible', compact and smooth. Cold sorts the moisture in his breath and crystallizes it in rime on his balaclava and twinkling showers when he exhales. He hears the noises of his body working but no other human sound, though sound carries in still air here over amazing distances: you can overhear conversations at miles'-range. Instead there come only the sharp cracks now and again of ice expanding on the distant Barrier, like pistols fired at random. The moon is almost down, but the sky is afire with green light, drifting and changing, blushing rose."

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"ice and the english imagination" is a much more accurate subtitle for this fascinating work than the one referring to scott in the antarctic. it IS about scott's expedition in that it takes apart the culture that built it and the men (and women) that participated in it, but readers looking for doomed polar adventure will probably be left confused or bored.

this is instead a dense cultural history that looks at the poles in relation to englishness, to emotion and affect, to gender, social niceties and taboos, to imperialism, to landscape, to art and propaganda, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. it reminded me of philip hoare's risingtidefallingstar in that it's hard to fit into a genre (it's non-fiction, and it's a complex read, even down to sentence structure, but it's not neatly academic; it contains very compelling character sketches and some memoir) and that it felt written for me, specifically.

its sections about the franklin expedition and its victorian afterlife were fascinating but it was the chapter about the edwardians that truly rocked. it has verve!!!!

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

While some sections were really great (the beginning which discusses the sublime and the section on Edwardian optimism especially), I had a really hard time digging into this one. I suspect the tone was too in-between for me... the quality of the prose was never really engaging on its own merits but it also wasn't quite logically structured like an academic text so it often felt like a bit of a slog. This is, of course, not helped by how much I've been reading about the poles lately but I think I preferred the Coldest Crucible which vaguely holds a similar premise but is about the American rather than English cultural imagination; that book had a much clearer thesis to follow. I think that's why this text suffers: it's explaining things without really structuring them around any particular claim so it's hard to feel an animating force in the text. Still, the first chapter about the sublime was excellent with its analysis so I feel like I can't completely write the book off... it was just... fine.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spufford is less interested in the history of polar explanation than the why of it: what drove so many Englishmen (and yes, in this era they were all men) to explore an inhospitable region where nothing apparently could be gained? Why did Robert Scott's failed quest to the South Pole become a hit movie, a children's book, and a moral lesson for both left (he failed from classism!) and right (sclerotic buraucracy!). Part of the drive to explore was that old standby, "because it's there!" but empire, ego and the belief the quest represented a test of character fueled it too, and often doomed it (it became better to face death gamely than be practical and, say, learn how the Inuit survived so well in the same environment). As others have said, Spufford's style doesn't really grab readers, but it's worth the effort.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishing book. It's an examination of Britain's polar expeditions, yes, and (as the title says) of its circular resonance in culture. Right there is reason enough to begin reading. But Spufford blows the doors off with lyrical, specific, gasp-inducing writing. You come away steeped in Victorian vs. Edwardian thinking, daily shipboard duties vs. large-hearted vision, heroism, pettiness, arrogance, sorrow. Spufford ranges among literature, journalism, diaries, memories and history so gracefully that I found myself underlining and re-reading passages again and again. This book is the perfect companion to "Endurance" and any other arctic/Antarctic narrative -- beyond telling us what happened, he tells us WHY happened, piercing and pure.

[Duncan Steele · Rating 2 out of 5]

"the story behind the antarctic tragedy of Captain Scott" screams the front cover.

Captain Scott and his exhibition will not be making an appearance until around page 250 of a 350 page book. Calling it a history of UK polar expedition up until 1912 would be more realistic.

If you want a general book then this will serve as a basic primer but if you want to know the ins and outs of the Scott expedition then there are far better books available.

[Mab · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already think Spufford is an extraordinary writer, and so I pushed through the density of this book, which weighs you down and freights you with meaning in the early chapters, sure that something astonishing would happen. I was right, and the last few chapters were incredible, and only so incredible because of the weight I was carrying from the rest of the book. An earlier exercise of Spufford's power, and less well-shaped than later books, but with much to admire.

[Schopflin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If, like me, you love polar literature, this book is both necessary and frustrating, as it reflects primarily not on the journeys themselves, but on contemporary perceptions on them, and their place in Victorian and Edwardian culture. Having said which, it is brilliant, dense, insightful and the final chapter an indulgent pleasure for anyone familiar with the story of Scott's polar journey.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

If i had a nickel for every time one of these largely non-fiction books about polar exploration had a bit at the end where the author retells the events of an expedition as though it were a novel & made me bawl like a baby I would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but weird that it’s happened twice

[Edmund Hyde · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really hard to digest. Compared to Red Plenty, which tells several digestible and personable stories, this felt like far more of a treatise. It's also completely mis-sold as a travel / adventure book, when really it's about the latter stages of imperialism. Some choice cuts were very interesting and quotable, but in general I was annoyed more than anything.

[Alana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took forever, but I'm really glad I read it. The book connects historical events and ideas into a clear whole, weaving in familiar figures from art, history, and literature and turning that era into one continuous narrative.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable in parts, soporific in others.

[Christian Cederberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book took to much imagination to enjoy.

[Allegra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read a lot of books about ice and boats and Englishmen over the last year and change but this one has to be one of the best and most moving by far. MAN……

[AVid_D · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not the book I was expecting (hoping for).

Save for the penultimate chapter, I found most of it to be quite boring and unenlightening. On the other hand, it really helped me fall asleep.

[Stef · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is perhaps the finest piece of literature regarding polar exploration that has ever been written. (second time reading it, there will be more times)

[Brittany]

History of exploring the artic-rather bland-not my cup of tea

[Hana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt my hair growing while reading this.