A Polar Affair: Antarctica's Forgotten Hero and the Secret Love Lives of Penguins

by Lloyd Spencer Davis

George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott's tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history.

A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick's long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species.

A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick's and Davis's explorations, observations and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Animals, Nature, Biography, Travel

392 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2019

About the author

Lloyd Spencer Davis fits easily into the category of creative non-fiction writing. He received the PEN (NZ) Best First Book Award for Non-fiction for Penguin: A Season in the Life of the Adelie Penguin, the story of Antarctica as seen through the eyes of a penguin. His next book, The Plight of the Penguin, won Book of the Year at the 2002 NZ Post Children's Book Awards, as well as winning the non-fiction category at the same awards.

He received a CLL Writer's Award — New Zealand's most significant award for the support of nonfiction — for Looking for Darwin, which also won the Runner's Up Award as the New Zealand Travel Book of the Year, 2008.

His other publications include Smithsonian Q&A Penguins, commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, and Penguins of New Zealand (with photographs by Rod Morris). With Claudia Babirat he wrote the textbook The Business of Documentary Filmmaking.

In addition, Spencer Davis is a director and scriptwriter of natural history documentaries – his films having won 12 international awards to date. Through his business Adelie Productions (www.adelie.biz), he has been writing, producing and directing documentaries for over 20 years. His films have won 12 international awards, including the ABU Prize of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, Hong Kong and the Prix Special du Jury, Festival de L'Oiseau, Abbeville, France. Film credits include Eating like a Gannet, Under Galapagos, Meet the Real Penguins and, with Wiebke Finkler, a documentary on Shona Dunlop MacTavish, Wind Dancer.

Spencer Davis attended Victoria University of Wellington and Canterbury University before gaining a PhD at the University of Alberta in Canada, as Commonwealth Scholar. He also writes essays for magazines including Natural History and newspapers like the Sunday Star-Times.

He currently holds the Stuart Chair in Science Communication at the University of Otago where, among other things, he teaches creative nonfiction writing. He has been a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, an Anzac Fellowship and a Prince and Princess of Wales Science Award.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've struggled with this book: struggled to read it and to review it, not as much as those noble and ignoble men who explored Antarctica struggled, but right now it seems close. The author is a well-respected professor and penguin expert, has received awards and even written about penguins for the Smithsonian. So this book may well be an abomination -- I mean aberration. He practices what he calls "creative non-fiction." I have other words for it and can't use any of them.

The book is an incoherent mashup of Adelie penguin studies (mostly of their sexual behavior), leering looks into the sex lives of long-dead Antarctic explorers, and unorganized information about so many different Antarctic expeditions and their men that if one hasn't read up on them elsewhere, reading "A Polar Affair" will likely result in confusion and possibly headaches. (And now I'm jealous of my friend with eidetic memory.) I've read many excellent books on all of the expeditions written about here and their men, and I feel I know less about them now than I did before I read "A Polar Affair." My brains are scrambled, I cannot unread this book and can only hope its contents fade with time.

The hook this worm is hung on is that Murray Levick, the man Scott selected to be physician for the Terra Nova expedition but who Scott did not choose to be part of the group headed to the Pole, spent a long time with a different group at Cape Adare, the largest breeding ground for Antarctic Adelie penguins, and so became the first to study them.

This was Victorian times, Levick was a modest man and in his journal he used coded Greek to cover up the info on many of the Adelie's sexual practices. Upon returning to England he published his findings minus the coded parts. One hundred years later his original journal was discovered, the author was given access and learned that he in fact was not the first researcher to document the varied sex lives of Adelies. Occasionally this book seemed like revenge.

Mixed in "A Polar Affair" along with the penguin research and some info on the Terra Nova expedition and on the simultaneous and successful Amundsen one, are details about other expeditions and explorers. They include, in no particular order, and they show up in the book in no particular order: Byrd, Peary, Shackleton, Mawson, Cook, Nansen, Ross and Franklin.

I recognize this is boring so far and I may have lost you as Spencer Davis lost me many times -- but now it gets good or, in my opinion, really bad. Why, I asked myself repeatedly, are these explorers mentioned in a book that purports to be about the research of Murray Levick and the author on Adelie penguins in Antarctica?

And it I think it comes (no pun intended) down to sex. After a while I came to the conclusion that the main reason he's displaced these other explorers in the book is so he can talk about their sex lives too. He is not just a professional voyeur of Adelies, he's leering back a hundred years at the sex lives of these men.

Many times I had to re-read the author's credentials, which include a Ph.D. from University of Alberta, whose science professors he claims clearly care more about their scientific studies than their grooming or exercise, because they're all overweight with bad hair. How proud U of A must be of this alum!

In "A Polar Affair" he writes about Adelie sex gleefully, specifically, extensively and with the enthusiasm of a man flashing schoolchildren on the playground. This is an advance review copy so I'm not free to quote Spencer Davis or my entire review would consist of nothing but quotes, there are so many that are so odd.

Throughout I found myself wondering if Banksy is now writing books, and in the genre "creative non-fiction." It's the only explanation I could think of for the publication of "A Polar Affair" (wink wink).

The Adelies: Spencer Davis has short introductions to each part named after and describing some of the Adelies' sexual behaviors. These are: Homosexuality, Divorce, Infidelity, Rape and Prostitution. And these are: penguins. One wonders if he ran out of parts or if the publisher drew the line at Sodomy and Necrophilia.

Because it certainly seems like it's the sex he's interested in (and possibly his research associate Fiona). He takes so much delight in the male homosexual activities of these penguins, describing their creative positions with more enthusiasm than anything he writes about Scott, except perhaps his wife's love affairs.

He anthropomorphizes the penguins to such a degree that he seems to actually consider them capable of divorce, intentional rape and prostitution and necrophilia. Even when females are being raped multiple times in a row by different males, how can anyone ever know they don't enjoy it; that would require Adelie criminal attorneys. And just because the female steals a good stone from a male's nest after sex with him does not make her a prostitute. Perhaps she desires both the sex and the stone.

For a respected author and scientist he comes (oh that word again) off as quite the pervert. Can penguins know they're committing necrophilia? Does the stuffed penguin doll he uses to watch them have simulated necrophilia constitute meaningful scientific inquiry? And most important, would you want your kids to enroll in this man's classes?

I'll leave the rest, since I can't quote, to paraphrase and let you decide if this is a worthy tome. Lloyd Spencer Davis, eminent scientist and university professor:

Writes that if Antarctica were a body, Cape Adare would be its genitals.
Regularly drops the f-bomb to describe sex acts of penguins and men, although with the penguins he most often uses what I can only assume is the technical scientific term: bonking.
Discusses the sex lives of just about every explorer. Because this is creative nonfiction.
Writes with no real evidence that Amundsen -- the hero who was not only first to the South Pole but who fifty years later history would prove was also first to the North Pole -- was asexual.

(In between are lodged vital bits of info about Antarctic exploration and other info on Adelies, including important things such as studying their stomach contents so repulses Spencer Davis he makes his research assistants do it [perhaps he spares Fiona?] along with a detailed description of how it takes two skuas to take apart a dead Adelie fledgling and eat it.)

He lets us know the crucial info that Shackleton prefered to read Browning as prelude to seduction and that Nansen mailed nude photos of himself to a particular woman he very much desired.
That Levick's son, who was mentally challenged, as an adult liked to run or ride his bicycle around naked in the village where he lived.
He refers to penguin rape as a heinous crime, which made me wonder why no one has made a citizens' arrest of the offending Adelies and again, whether Banksy wrote this book.
Mentions that males will bonk anything within a flipper's length of them and that during courtship they'll bonk anything that moves.
And throughout he keeps tabs on the explorers' affairs, lovers, breakups, even the suicide of one explorer who was sleeping with the wife of another while that one was away in Antarctica and who, upon his return, made up for lost time bonking many, many women not his wife.

And here I just have to use an exact quote (with apologies to Amazon and the publisher) referring to the Adelies' looks, because it is perhaps the worst sentence I've ever -- well, judge for yourself:

"But when all the participants in a soap opera look identical, it is hard to see the opera let alone the soap."

Science marches on. Penguins march on. This book marches on like an adolescent male on his way to a friend's house to watch porn. And I have marched on to another, far better nonfiction book which I hope will help bleach this one from my mind.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My eye caught three things: Robert Falcon Scott--Antarctica--Penguins--and I submitted my request for the galley. Later I noted one other stand-out word: Sex. Specifically, the sex lives of penguins, but the book embraced more than just the birds' proclivities.

My first introduction to Antarctica was Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater, which an elementary school teacher read aloud to my class. I read it many times. When I was about eleven years old I picked up The Great White South by Herbert Ponting, the photographer on the Scott Expedition to the South Pole. Scott's story caught my imagination. He was a tragic, flawed hero. Ever since, I have been drawn to read books about Polar expeditions and explorers.

A Polar Affair by Llyod Spencer Davis is a highly readable and entertaining book about Davis's career in penguin research and the stories of the explorers who first encountered the Antarctic penguins. Specifically, George Murray Levick, physician with the Scott expedition, who became the first to record the habits and lives of penguins.

Levick wrote a book but it was never made public. When Davis discovered a copy he was shocked to learn that he was not the first to observe what Levick had already documented.

The book is a wonderful blend, offering science and nature, history, first-person account, and adventure. He vividly recounts the story of the men who vied to be the first to reach the South Pole, including their human frailties and ill-thought decisions.

The story of Levick and two other men trapped over an Antarctic winter in an ice cave is especially horrifying to read! The harsh realities of the penguins' struggle to survive was eye-opening.

Davis's quest to understand Levick and the mystery of the suppressed research takes him across the world, snooping into libraries and museums.

Even though I know the stories, I was riveted, especially since Davis includes the explorer's personal lives. As Davis writes, "Our idols are never so virtuous as we make them out to be."

The next visit I make to the Detroit Zoo Penguin Conservation Center I will be looking at the penguins with more appreciation.

I was given access to a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[George Ilsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bizarre and loopy book that tries very hard to tie all sorts of material up into some sort of neat package. Perhaps if the Antarctica material was new to me, I would have found some of the anecdotes more interesting, but most of the terrain has already been well explored.

Let's start with that misleading subtitle. The "forgotten hero" was George Murray Levick, a doctor with the doomed Scott expedition who ended up writing a book about penguins. Levick was neither forgotten nor a particular hero, and we learn very little about him from this book. His penguin book did omit a couple of pages of material about the sex lives of penguins that was considered inappropriate at the time (we never do learn who made this decision), and the author independently observed this behaviour while studying penguins in the 1970s (before Levick's material resurfaced in an archive).

The author accuses Levick of being "sex-obsessed" and of anthropomorphizing the penguins, yet the evidence presented rather points towards this author displaying those very same failings. In terms of the penguins, Davis repeatedly uses words such as "debauched" and "immoral" and "immorality" to describe their sexual behaviour (because they are randy and not monogamous). They are "unfaithful" etc.

Davis will describe penguin behaviour and then abruptly shift to Scott's wife having an affair, as if there is some sort of parallel. These shifts are jarring and happen repeatedly, from Scott to Admundson, from Norway to Newfoundland, from the North Pole to the South, from the 1970s to the present to 1910.

This is what happens when you try to write a book about someone and there is simply not enough material. You end up traveling to Norway to look at the Fram and Nansen's house, and try to weave the irrelevance of your useless search for fresh material into the narrative.

The result was a book I found to be largely incoherent, wildly scattered, and startlingly moralistic when viewing the natural world through the lens of preconceived notions. Davis claims that Levick's attitudes were "Victorian"; yet Davis's moralistic approach to science seems equally outdated.

1.5 stars rounded up, because penguins.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amundsen. Scott. Shackleton. Levick. ... Wait, who? The world knows of the exploits of Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton - men of renown from the turn of the 20th century famous for their exploits in the Antarctic and beyond. In this book, Davis - a lifelong penguin biologist and filmmaker - traces the path of a man who both inspired his own work and is forever tied into the lives of the more famous men who were his contemporaries. That man being George Murray Levick, the member of Scott's crew who inadvertently became the very first penguin biologist - and who made discoveries about Adelie penguins that would go hidden for nearly a century before Davis himself next observed them. In this book, Davis explores both his own path and research and that of Levick, as he finds himself on a quest to find the "real" George Murray Levick and the reason Levick hid his more salacious findings about Adelie penguins. Truly remarkable work, told in an incredibly approachable and easily readable manner. Very much recommended for all, particularly those who - like this particular reader - find themselves also very attached to penguins.

[Allegra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, like the penguins it discusses, was incredibly horny

[Karissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book through the Amazon Vine program for review. I kind of surprised myself by finishing this. In the end, finding out who got to the South Pole first and who survived the journey really propelled me through the book.

This book is a mishmash of historical and contemporary encounters with Adelie penguins. There is a lot of survival and history of polar exploration as well.

I enjoyed the middle portion of this book (where they are in Antarctica) much more than the beginning and end. The beginning and end just throw around too many names and jump around too much.

In fact the discontinuity is a fundamental flaw of this book. The author jumps around between past explorers and present explorers kind of willy nilly. He also jumps between his search for info on Levick and his own experiences at the South Pole. He does make an effort to tie together the topics across all of the people and timelines but it still comes across as a bit jumbled.

This is also not a book to read with kids. Each chapter starts with a two page discussion on a deviant type of sexual behavior and how it could relate to penguin reproductive behaviors. In fact this is another heavy theme throughout the book that felt forced at times. Davis often tries to relate the sexual exploits of the Adelie penguins to the sexual exploits of past explorers. The heavy sex theme is a bit weird and feels contrived.

The above issues aside, I did enjoy reading and learning about Antarctica and what explorers who go there suffer through. It was also intriguing to read about the different types of penguins and how they reproduce and survive. I didn't find the piecemeal history and background about the different explorers to be as interesting.

Overall this is a decent read if you are interested in the history of polar travel and penguins. If blatant discussion about deviant sexual behavior bothers you I would skip it.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end of this book I feel like I have gained all sorts of knowledge in the best possible way. This book is not only about penguin sex (though it tells you a whole lot about that!), it is about the race for the South Pole and polar exploration and the hardships those explorers experienced. I learned that it takes a special kind of person to push those limits.

The author goes from his own research and experience in penguin biology and surviving in Antarctica to that of the first penguin biologist, Murray Levick, and the South Pole race between Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Admundsen.

This is an endlessly fascinating account about those first Antarctic explores and the animals they encountered based on their notes and diaries, but written in a clear and engaging way. Their hardships break your heart. It also looks at their lives (if they lived) after polar exploration. And of course, the author shows us glimpses into the often vulgar lives of the Adelie penguins.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in adventure or natural history.

[Adelaine Dawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I needed way more gay penguins and waaay less white men making questionable choices and decisions in the name of “scienc and exploration”. I don’t think Davis even knew what book he was writing. In a book where the title says “the secret love lives of penguins” I expected more than 15 pages on penguins and their fascinating sex lives. This should have been two different books and marketed way differently I felt like I completely wasted my time continuing to read this for more penguin facts I never got. I totally skimmed the last 30 pages I was so over it. If anyone knows of any books that are ACTUALLY about gay penguins pls lmk

[Sani Hachidori · Rating 3 out of 5]

INHALT:

Der Forscher Llyod Spencer Davis nutzt dieses Buch, um seine persönlichen Erfahrungen während der Pinguinforschung zu erläutern. Es ist ein Abriss durch seine eigene Karriere, in der er zunächst vermeintlich neue Entdeckungen zum Liebesleben der Pinguine macht, die sich danach aber als längst bekannt herausstellen. Der Grund: Ein altes Manuskript des Forscher Levick wird entdeckt und veröffentlicht. Besonders interessant ist daran, dass Levick die besonders brisanten Stellen in einer Geheimschrift verfasste.
Spencer Davis' Neugier ist geweckt und er begibt sich auf Spurensuche zu diesem Forscher, der sogar der allererste Pinguinforscher der Welt war und den trotzdem niemand so richtig kennt. Zu sehr wird sein Schaffen von dem Heldentum seiner verstorbenen Antarktis-Kollegen überschattet, wie bspw. Scott, die in der Kälte dieses Kontinents im Kampf um das Erreichen des Südpols umkamen. Der Autor möchte hier also Levick ein Denkmal setzen und gleichzeitig auf die erstaunlichen Auswüchse der Sexualität von Pinguinen hinweisen.
In mehreren Kapiteln werden diese Themen angesprochen. Zur Sprache kommen Homosexualität, Scheidung, Untreue, Vergewaltigung und Prostitution.
Der Autor geht außerdem nicht nur auf seine eigene Biografie und die Levicks ein, sondern auch auf die Lebensgeschichten der anderen Antarktisforscher wie Scott, Amundsen u.v.m.

In der Mitte des Buches befindet sich ein umfangreicher Bildtteil, der das Geschriebene ergänzt. Zu sehen sind sowohl Schwarz-Weiß- als auch Farbaufnahmen.


SCHREIBSTIL:

Spencer Davis hat eine sowohl fachlich kompetente als auch humorvolle Art, die Ereignisse im Buch zu beschreiben. An den richtigen Stellen werden die Schilderungen der Antarktisexpeditionen durch Zitate der damaligen Beteiligten ergänzt.
Skurrilen Situationen und den Beschreibungen von Pinguinen haftet dabei immer ein leicht humoristischer Ton an, als würde der Autor mit dem Auge zwinkern oder schelmisch lachen. Es macht durchaus Freude, seinen Ausführungen zu folgen.

Das einzige Manko des Buches, was für mich den Leseeindruck sehr geschmälert hat, war der sehr starke Fokus auf den Expeditionen. Der Titel und auch die Kapitelüberschriften des Buches lassen vermuten, dass das Buch die Pinguine in den Mittelpunkt der Beschreibungen stellen würde. Dies ist nicht der Fall. Gefühlt 20% des Buches sind schätzungsweise den Pinguinen gewidmet, der Rest ist die Beschreibung der neuzeitlichen Recherche nach Levick oder der unterschiedlichen Antarktis- oder Nordpolexpeditionen. Hierbei wird besonders der Wettlauf um das Erreiche des Südpols von Amundsen und Scott ins Auge gefasst. Dazu hatte ich im Vorfeld bereits etwas gelesen, weswegen diese Erzählungen für mich persönlich leider nichts Neues mehr waren. Der Autor legt zudem das Augenmerk auch auf die biografischen Details, die das Liebesleben der historischen Persönlichkeiten betrifft, was ich wiederum sehr charmant fand, um die Brücke zum Buchtitel und den gefiederten Protagonisten zu schlagen.


FAZIT:

Zusammenfassend kann ich sagen, dass ich wahrscheinlich mit falschen oder einfach anderen Erwartungen an das Buch herangegangen bin. Ich hatte Lektüre über Pinguine erwartet, brisante Details über ihr Liebesleben, ein Eintauchen in den antarktischen Alltag dieser wunderbaren Tierchen. Stattdessen waren viele interessante Informationen über Antarktisexpeditionen vorhanden. Leider war ich auf dem Gebiet schon etwas belesen, sodass es für mich oft etwas langweilig war. Für Leser, die hier aber noch keine Vorkenntnisse haben, ist dieses Buch ein wahnsinnig umfassender und guter Überblick über die Expeditionen, gespickt mit allerlei Anekdoten, biografischen Details und kleinen Exkursen in die Welt der Pinguine.

Ein Buch, welches meine Erwartungen leider nicht erfüllen konnte. Für meinen Geschmack war hier zu wenig Pinguin vorhanden. Die sehr detaillierten Informationen über die Antarktisexpeditionen sind für Leser ohne Vorkenntnisse sehr lesenswert, für mich war es leider nicht viel Neues. Lediglich die biografischen Anekdoten über das Liebesleben der historischen Forscher waren für mich neu und erstaunlich. Wer Pinguinlektüre sucht, wird hier wahrscheinlich etwas enttäuscht sein, wer historische Expeditionen und die Antarktis kennenlernen möchte, wird her auf jeden Fall fündig!

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book, and spent a precious day reading it, glued to my chair. Well worth it. I noticed it on my local library shelf, and so glad I did. Yes, I have visited Antarctica (and the arctic) and have read countless books about these regions. As a physician, I appreciate the importance of scientific observation and how scientific method has evolved. I guess this book isn’t for everyone, but it was just a perfect book for me. It’s wonderful to live in a world with such variety —-of books and of readers.

[Sophia Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read an article on this book I knew I had to read it due to my love for penguins. There were some interesting parts and I learned quite a bit, but there were a lot of sections where I felt like it was information overload and I would find myself losing interest.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Inho, the author should have stuck to factual observations and skipped the cutesy comments.

[Pat MacEwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've seen about Antarctic exploration, which it covers in the course of describing the first scientific looks at the love lives of Adelie penguins. The author thought he was the first to observe some surprising aspects of the penguins' behavior, including courtship and egg-tending by mated pairs, but also what appears to be same-sex mating rituals between some males, the infidelity of many females and possibly a form of penguin prostitution! As Davis delves into the work of previous polar explorers, however, he finds out he was scooped a century earlier by George Murray Levick, who was part of Robert Scott's ill-fated expedition. Levick observed the same behaviors, but never published his 1915 manuscript or his field notes on the topic. In fact, he deliberately suppressed his own findings, marking the ms. "Not for Publication." Davis considers the possible reasons why, which include Victorian mores about such things, but doesn't really come to a conclusion. No matter. His discussions of penguin behavior and whether they have evolutionary benefits is well worth the price of the book, aside from the history he's included.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is supposed to be about George Murray Levick, the first person to scientifically study penguins, which he did primarily in 1911/1912 in Antarctica. More, it's supposed to be about Levick's studies that found some deviant (mostly to Victorian sensibilities, but in some cases to modern ones too) sexual behavior among Adelie Penguins, which were suppressed from his published book on Penguins, and which was found again and published 100 years after. Considering that the author is also the scientist who, it was widely believed at the time, had first discovered homosexual behaviour of Adelie penguins among other details of the sex life of Adelie penguins, this seemed like a fascinating book.

That is not what this book is about. Sure, it has its place in the book. Maybe that is the nominal source for the books organization. But either there wasn't enough information about Levick, or the author got distracted. Most of this book is about contemporary expeditions. Levick was part of Scott's Polar expedition--though a side part of it, not the main group going to the pole itself. Some time spent on Scott, and on Scott's rival Amundsen, would thus be important background, but more of the book is about Scott, Amundsen, and other leaders of polar expeditions than is spent on Levick.

I was fine with that since I didn't know much to begin with about the polar expeditions, but it will probably be a drawback for many readers. Though Davis does at least offer his own spin on the story as often as not, as someone who has been to the Antarctic for his own scientific pursuits. He also treats on the sex lives of many of the explorers (apparently Scott's wife was sleeping with Amundsen's mentor even as Scott was struggling and failing to return from the South pole back to the relative safety of base camp--not that she knew it at the time). Of course, Davis treats all these affairs in much the same way as he treats the sex lives of penguins--normally using the same terminology.

[BrocheAroe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Victorian morals, the sex lives of penguins, and Antarctic exploration combine in this unique natural history historical travelogue by an award-winning scientist.

Lloyd Spencer Davis is an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and author, in great part thanks to his work as an award-winning scientist specializing in the mating habits of penguins. Thus is came as quite a surprise when, 35 years into his career, he discovered that he was not the first to make groundbreaking observations about the sexual proclivities of these birds, but was following in the footsteps of George Murray Levick, who originally made these discoveries in the early 1910s. Not only did Levick make some rather startling observations, but he then later prevented them from becoming public knowledge. Davis needed to find out why.

In A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero and the Secret Love Lives of Penguins, Davis’s 12th book, he combines a biography of Levick – the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s failed Antarctic expedition in 1910 and the world’s first penguin researcher – with an Antarctic travelogue of both past- and present-day expeditions and a natural history of the sexual habits of the birds themselves, including 16 pages of full-color photographs. Following in the ghost of Levick’s literal and scientific footsteps, Davis uncovers who Levick was as a man: constrained and restrained by his Victorian upbringing, and yet ultimately a survivor as a result. It was due to that same upbringing that resulted in Levick’s judgement of the immorality of the penguins’ sexual habits that led him to bury scientific evidence for over 50 years, now presented to the public by Davis’s conscientious, and more open-minded, research.

[Betsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has two main stories. One is the tragic Scott expedition to the north pole. The other is a biography of Murray Levick, one of the other members of that team who, among other things, documented a lot about the mating habits of the Adele penguins. The first story, while interesting, didn't really need to be told again. Scott's journey has been very well documented in many other places. The second story quickly became distasteful in the author's focus on the varieties of sexual behavior of the penguins (homosexuality, pedophilia, necrophilia, rape and prostitution). Instead of presenting his observations in the dispassionate language of science he uses oddly judgmental language like "perversion" and gutter language (f***, "cum shot"). He also makes similar comments about the behavior of the explorers themselves and their spouses.

Some reviews have suggested that the author was making a negative point about the mores of late Victorian society but it doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds like the author himself fully embraces those views. Toward the end of the book I even began to feel that the author himself had begun to form an unhealthy relationship with Murray Levick, expressing himself as "disappointed" in Levick as if he had a personal connection to the man. The impression I came away with was that I had read something smutty and unpleasant.

[Jacqui Wallens · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m really torn with this book. There was plenty that was interesting and well worth reading, but quite frankly the way the author describes sex (of both the human and penguin variety) came across as perverted and misogynistic.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Ratio of penguins to polar exploration history was off. I wanted more penguins.

[Jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

This needed more penguins and less history, but I didn't mind the story!

[BW · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins, penguins are popularly thought to be paragons of virtue -- monogamous birds enduring harsh conditions to raise their children with love. Unsurprisingly, the truth is more complicated.

Lloyd Spencer Davis, a penguin biologist, has studied Adelie penguins for many years and observed all sorts of behavior that doesn't fit their popular image: Adelies aren't monogamous; even when they have picked a mate for the season, they still have sex with other penguins; Davis has seen penguin rape and prostitution. Davis thought he was discovering these behaviors for the first time, but in 2012, an old paper was found and published. The paper was written by George Murray Levick, a member of R.F. Scott's final expedition, sometime before 1915; it turns out that Levick had also observed some of the penguins' sexual behavior and was apparently so shocked by it that he decided to hide these observations from the world (by, for example, writing about them in code and not mentioning them when he wrote the first book ever published about penguins).

Curiosity piqued, Davis sets out to learn more about Levick, and although the book claims that its focus is Levick, it really interweaves Davis's own experiences studying the penguins, an account of Amundsen and Scott's race to the South Pole, and what Davis learns about Levick.

For me, the most interesting and successful strand was Davis's own work, as he describes how he and his colleagues conduct fieldwork in Antarctica. For example, to find out what Adelies eat, they used to catch the penguins when they returned from sea, force them to vomit up everything they'd eaten, and then sift through it. (Davis promises that this "has little impact on their survival", and happily newer methods allow scientists now to analyze feathers and feces rather than inducing vomiting.)

Levick's experiences as part of Scott's Northern Party make a great survival story, but other aspects of the book fell short for me. For one thing, there are errors: Davis mentions "strastugi" multiple times when he presumably means sastrugi; he writes that Cape Crozier is the southernmost breeding place for Emperor penguins, when it's actually Gould Bay that has this distinction. And the fact that I, a total non-expert, noticed errors like this makes me wonder what other errors there might be in the narrative.

Davis is interested not only in the sexual behavior of penguins but also in the sexual behavior of explorers like Scott and Amundsen, and his writing about this is often sophomoric. For example, he writes about Shackleton's relationship with a woman, "Evidently, Antarctica is not the only land he has explored and laid claim to." It sometimes felt like he was telling us about certain explorers not because they were important to his primary goal of understanding Levick but solely so that he could throw in salacious tidbits about affairs and suicides. I can see that Davis wasn't attempting to give us a scholarly look at Levick's life, but the book ends up being so much about Davis's particular fascinations that I'm left wanting to go find a better source to read about Scott's Northern Party.

[Jenny Blanchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

TL;DR: a very interesting topic, mostly not that well written.

This book is ostensibly about the “first penguin biologist,” Murray Levick, who was part of Scott’s Antarctic expedition, and about the author’s rediscovery of his work, and the author’s own work on Adelie penguins.

Really, this book is mostly about Amundsen and Scott’s race to the South Pole, and general early polar exploration. And about the author’s weird quest to learn about Murray Levick. Luckily, the parts of the book about Antarctic exploration are the most interesting and best written, except when he’s talking about affairs between various explorers and other explorers’ wives, when he gets pretty speculative and cringey. Interestingly, the only sex he doesn’t speculate on is the homosexual sex that would be more than likely among any group of men away from any women for years at a time, and which was relatively common at that time aboard naval ships.

And then there’s the penguin science, including a bunch about penguin sex. The facts are interesting in themselves, but sadly the author seems to be trying awfully hard to be cutesy and/or funny, or “accessible” or something, because many parts are just painfully cringey. He’s a wildlife biologist, but instead of writing like one, he alternates between saying the penguins “have sex” or “copulate,” and saying they “bonk” or “hump” or “do the wild thing.” Uuuuuugh. It’s too bad, because his scientific research sounds pretty interesting in itself, and doesn’t need all this. And despite saying he wants to talk about the Victorian context of Levick’s work and how his observations of penguin sex were suppressed, he really seems to be imposing his own moral views on penguin behavior, and on the lives of the polar explorers, for that matter, and those views aren’t much more advanced than the Victorians’. At one point at the end, he even says something about “penguin perverts,” which I find incredibly offensive coming from a supposed professional scientist, and ironic considering how much he criticizes Levick for anthropomorphizing penguins in his work.

The farther along in the book I got, the more he speculates, sentimentalizes, and moralizes, about both penguins and the explorers, and the more annoyed I got. Honestly, I would have liked this book a lot more if I had stopped after Part IV and just skipped the last 50 pages altogether. Also, for a book so dependent on conveying a sense of place to the reader, the fact that there’s no map of Antarctica included is just bewildering to me.

Overall it was still worth the read for me, and I definitely learned a lot about Antarctic exploration and some about penguins, despite many parts feeling like a teenage boy is trying hard not to giggle while writing about S-E-X.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

My sister recommended this book to me as my husband and I were about to embark on a trip to Antarctica. I am so glad she told me about it because the book helped me understand so much about the age of exploration of the poles, and more importantly, what I know about penguins.
The author, Davis, is a penguin researcher who believes he is the first researcher, ca. 1980s, to describe penguin sexual behavior that can’t obviously be explained by Darwinian selection: homosexuality, rape, and prostitution. Yet a previously unpublished scientific notebook of the first penguin researcher, George Murray Levick, is discovered where he describes just such behavior—but hides it in code! Davis hypothesizes that the restrictive Victorian morals of the time kept Levick from publishing his observations. Delightfully, though, in trying to understand Levick in his time, Davis delves into the history of polar exploration but shows that although the daring polar explorers of early 20th century outwardly displayed the the Victorian sexual mores of the time, in fact they were all somewhat similar to the penguins they encountered.
I loved this book because it avoided the overly heroic descriptions of the age of polar exploration and really set it into context of what we all are anyway—animals! This was an enjoyable read that helped my enjoy my antarctic expedition even more.

[R.E. Conary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lloyd Spencer Davis tells a fascinating love story. A love affair with Antarctica and the extremes that early explorers endured and died for to experience it and the penguins that breed there. The book is also the latest to put the kibosh on the myth that same-gender sexuality is against nature as well as the other myth that penguins mate for life.

As the author says, “Antarctica is a harsh mistress. She exacts a high price from penguins and men for being with her; for getting things wrong; for being late; for not having enough food, the right feathers or the right clothes, or, simply, for not being fat enough . . . it is not that evolution finds virtue in homosexuality, divorce, infidelity, rape, or prostitution: these are simply the consequences, the collateral damage, in the competitive race these penguins are in to breed successfully in an environment where the tolerances for success are tiny. Natural selection is all about the winning, not the route taken to get there.”

A fascinating book. Unfortunately, my ARC (advance reading copy) does not include any photos which is disappointing.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I'm a scientist I rarely read non-fiction for down time. But when I saw this book pop up, I thought "Penguins. Homosexuality. This sounds interesting." It's a common misconception that penguins mate for life and this book first explores this misconception. By following a number of key people who's sole mission was to be the first at the South pole, Lloyd Spencer Davis narrates finds of penguins, extreme conditions and human responses over a number to voyages. Lloyd Spencer Davis also interjects with his studies of adiele penguins and his research into the people who contributed towards the voyage and research of adiele penguin mating rituals and habits by the first ever penguin biologist, Levick. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was easy to read with elements of humour and some beautiful language to describe the terrain. My only criticism is that it would have been beneficial to include a map of Antartica to get a judge of distance and bearing to help visualise the journies more.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes the reader to Antarctica and the really horrendously challenging efforts to survive there in the early 1900's when the race to get to the South Pole was going on. It is still a challenge to spend a season in the Antarctic, but this was before so many technological advances that would have been helpful to the explorers. The author discovers some long-suppressed papers by a biologist of the time, Dr. Levick, and finds his interest piqued. He also travels to Antarctica and makes comparisons between the earlier observations and what he saw when he was there. The life-style of the Adelie penguin is revealed here to be much as Levick discovered in the early 1900's, but it was not revealed to the scientific community. The author moves between various periods in his narrative. We follow the ill-fated efforts of Robert Scott as he attempts to get to the South Pole, and we meet several other adventurers of the time.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked a lot about this book. I did learn a lot about penguin mating that I didn't know. I learned a lot about Murray Levick who probably should be better known for some of the same reasons as Shackleton - maintaining discipline and leadership to help get a stranded winter party in Antarctica back to safety. It's also fascinating that he self-censored his observations about Adelie penguins. And somehow I had not known what a bunch of serial philanderers these explorers (and Scott's wife) were! I didn't love the structure in parts of this book - the back and forth from Amundsen and Scott and sometimes Shackleton and Mawson with the present day in an awkward manner. But what annoyed me the most was the crudeness and the flip comments and comparisons (cheating by penguins vs male polar explorers). I had no idea the author was a kiwi - it's not really a NZ book but that's why it ended up on that bookshelf too.

[Mortisha Cassavetes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love penguins and knew I would love this book. This is the true account of the suppression of findings in regards to the Adélie penguins and their way of life. On the tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910, Dr. George Murray Levick, while marooned, decided to study and journal the day to day life of the penguins. Discovering their scandalous sexual lifestyle, Society was not ready to hear of such things and thus his findings were hidden from the public even so far as his journal was sequestered and hidden. This book goes into what was hidden and what was found during this author's trip to the Antarctic a century later. I highly recommend this book. I learned so much about penguins and their true lifestyle.

[Sara Tiede · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I'll admit to some drawbacks that may not make this book everyone's cup of tea, I found it just really enjoyable! The author clearly loves his subjects, both historical and ornithological. While he claims that his own background is in penguin biology, this particular tale does focus more on the history of the polar races, and Levick's part in them. His polar exploits are certainly incredible!

The author's style was sometimes rather choppy, but also came across as highly conversational to me. That will be an aspect of personal opinion.
I did also notice that the publisher failed to do some proper editing, which was oddly most noticeable in two central chapters, where the editor seems to have just given up perhaps? It was just weird that the most editing slips were so concentrated.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

To start, this book was hard to plow into initially with all the names and dates of apparently insignificant detail. Once it actually worked its way into the race to the South Pole by Amundson and Scott, it became a more interesting read, particularly the brute struggles against nature the teams endured.

However, I could not overcome the feeling during my entire read of this book, that it was a ‘man’s read, a man’s book.’ It was written by a man about man’s exploits of nature and women, and while the men in the book were fully developed as to the story line, the women were not. Women, as penguins, were for sex, or about sex, but beyond that, nothing else.

[A.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting book, nicely written, although some of the connections in it seemed rather forced, and there was a lot of focus on the infidelities of polar explorers and scientists to tie their story in with the infidelities of penguins. Don't expect to find anything out quickly about either penguin sex or the life of Murray Levick. Most of the comes near the end. The author pads the book out, but fascinatingly so, with accounts of the big figures in the history of polar exploration, particularly that of the Antarctic, and intersperses the narrative with his own history in penguin research.