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[[Category:New Reviews|Autobiography]]
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{{newreview
|title=Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins
|author=Gavin Francis
|rating=5
|genre=Travel
|summary=I know two books don't make a genre, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on in their lives and their surroundings, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable places. One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself south, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been in the past – even if he hid himself away in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companions, in a place where – apart from the ice, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be alone, but the very tenuous and isolated feel of the place in the huge emptiness of the landscape is the main point of this book – that, and communing with emperor penguins…
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Harry Redknapp
|summary=John Bingham, 7th Baron Clanmorris, volunteered to serve in the army at the outbreak of the Second World War, but his sight prevented front-line service and he joined MI5. Prior to this he’d been a journalist, working on the '’Hull Daily Mail’’ before moving to Fleet Street. He found a natural home in MI5 and a considerable talent for interrogation. At a time when spies are thought of as being flamboyant, he was the opposite - a small, bespectacled man who could easily blend into the background. His greatest skill was that he was a patient listener. [[:Category:John Le Carre|John Le Carre]] has said that nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in his [[Call for the Dead by John le Carre|first novel]]. Le Carre was a junior colleague in MI5.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849545138</amazonuk>
}}
