Books : Cold Burial: A True Story of Endurance and Disaster
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 971.9202092
EAN: 9780312288549
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0312288549
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: February 18, 2002
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
He was known as Hornby of the North, the Brit who rejected his wealthy background for the frontier life of Canada's frozen north. In 1926, Jack Hornby, the living legend, took his young cousin, Edgar Christian, and Harold Adlard to the remotest part of the Barren Lands, accessible only by canoe and dog team. Except he didn't bring dogs, nor enough clothing or supplies. Instead, he staked their lives on the fifty-fifty chance of meeting with the great caribou migration. In his diary, the young Edgar wrote, "We live on our rifles and see nobody." Two years later, the diary would be found stashed in the stove near the skeletons of the three men. Powell-Williams has meticulously reconstructed this chilling and controversial adventure, considered by some a noble repetition of Mallory and Scott's expeditions, by others a pitiful folly, and by those who lived it, an expression of honor, camaraderie, and courage. --Lesley Reed
Product Description:
For schoolboys in the 1920s, too young to have experienced first-hand the horrors of World War One, theirs was yet the age of adventure. Their imaginations fired by the exploits of Robert Scott, T. E. Lawrence, Ernest Shackleton, and George Mallory, and by the novels of John Buchan and Jack London, they dreamed of exploring and conquering new frontiers. Lawrence had retreated from public life, and Scott, Shackleton, and Mallory were by then all dead, but their heroic feats remained the measure of British manhood, the standard to be carried forward. In the Spring of 1926, Edgar Christian, a young man of eighteen fresh out of public school, joined his dashing cousin, the legendary (if somewhat self-styled) adventurer Jack Hornby, and a friend named Harold Adlard on an expedition into the Barren Lands of the Canadian Northwest Territories. The plan was to hunt caribou and trap for fur. For young Edgar, the Barrens expedition offered a chance to prove himself and to find his direction in life; for Hornby, a veteran of the Great War as well previous forays into the Northwest (he was known in some quarters as "Hornby of the North"), it represented his latest dare with disaster. Together they would demonstrate that civilized men could survive, even thrive, in one of the world's most inhospitable regions. They were proved wrong. Based in large part upon a diary left behind by Edgar, discovered when his body and those of his companions were found two years after their deaths, Clive Powell-Williams' account of the expedition is a gripping narrative of innocence and experience, youthful idealism and unyielding nature. It matters little that we know in advance the tragic outcome, for in its unfolding Cold Burial recounts a tale of courage, folly, and ultimately redemptive love that will haunt readers long after they've read the last page.AUTHORBIO: A teacher at St. Martin's School in Middlesex, England, Clive Powell-Williams was introduced to Edgar Christian's diary by the archivist at nearby Dover College, to whichChristian's grieving parents had donated it after its discovery. Fascinated by what he read, Powell-Williams spent nine years researching the story behind the diary. The result is this book.
Average Rating: 
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I first read about northern frontiersman Jack Hornby in McKay Jenkins's excellent "Bloody Falls of the Coppermine." Hornby was a guide to two missionaries who would later be killed in the far north by two Inuits. Hornby had vast knowledge of survival in the far north and even spoke the native language of the Inuit people. Alas, he was unreliable, irresponsible, and had the tendency to go off on his own. "Cold Burial" covers Hornby's final adventure where many of his personality flaws that made ... Read More
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In 1926, the Barren Lands of the Canadian Northwest Territories were rightly regarded as an inhospitable region of appalling weather coupled with the threat of starvation, accident, and loneliness, a place where men (meaning Europeans) would be tested to the limit. Jack Hornsby, a troubled veteran of WWI, drifter, and adventurer, had been there, and liked it. He put together an expedition with Harold Adler and Edgar Christian, two young and inexperienced friends, with the intention of wintering north ... Read More
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In recent months there have been several books written about polar exploration, and their success indicates that the reading public seems to have a continuing fascination with these expeditions. This spring, the A and E cable network produced "Shackleton", a cold-country-frontier saga. In this tradition, Clive Powell-Williams has written "Cold Burial."
This book is an engrossing page-turner and a quick read. You will be caught up in the tale of 18 year old Edgar Christian and his mother's ... Read More
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For anybody that has read and enjoyed some of the adventurer books released in the last few years (Into Thin Air, etc.), Cold Burial is a must.
75 years ago, 3 British men set out on a journey up the Thelon River (in Northern Alberta) and into the Canadian Arctic. None of them made it back alive. When their bodies were discovered by the RCMP, the investigators also found a diary. This diary, written by the youngest member of the party (Edgar Christian, age 18) chronicled the shift from courageous ... Read More
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