Roland Huntford is an author, principally of biographies of Polar explorers. He lives in Cambridge, and was formerly Scandinavian correspondent of The Observer, also acting as their winter sports correspondent. He was the 1986?87 Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. He has written biographies of Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen. Huntford's controversial The Last Place on Earth had a tremendous impact on public interest in Polar matters. Huntford put forth the point of view that Roald Amundsen's success in reaching the South Pole was abetted by much superior planning, whereas errors by Scott ultimately resulted in the death of Scott and his companions. Defenders of Scott's actions, notably Ranulph Fiennes, assert that Huntford, who lacks direct experience of Polar travel and man-hauling, is not qualified to draw the conclusions he does on Scott's alleged technical deficiencies. In his biography of Captain Scott, Fiennes offers a rebuttal of some of Huntford's assertions of Scott's deficiencies. [More at Wikipedia]

January 1st, 1927 in (Age 97)