Had we lived . . . 
Jenny Diski
- Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South by David Crane Buy this book
On 9 February, an exhibition of remarkable new photographs by Josef Hoflehner opens at the Atlas Gallery in London. The pictures show interiors of the base camp huts built and lived in between 1901 and 1912 by Scott’s and Shackleton’s polar expeditions. The huts and their contents have been preserved intact, and the photographs show intensely close details of things long left behind: ragged shirts and socks hanging up on lines, wooden cases forming a wall, a jar of fruit salts, bottled redcurrants and gooseberries, tins of dried onions and parsnips, reams of unused paper on a shelf, a small open book with curled pages next to a cut end of rope, a view of the main dining-table and chairs that echoes the famous picture of the same table with Scott and his men sitting around it celebrating Christmas.
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Jenny Diski’s new novel, Apology for the Woman Writing, will be published in November. She is currently bobbing about on the South Atlantic.
Other articles by this contributor:
Seriously Uncool · Susan Sontag
Don’t think about it · The Trouble with Sonia Orwell
It wasn’t him, it was her · Nietzsche’s Bad Sister
Tremble for Tomorrow · In the Vilna Ghetto
Diary · The Friendly Spider Programme
Did Jesus walk on water because he couldn’t swim? · Jewish Seafarers
Jowls are available · ‘Second Life’
Hang on to the doily · Catherine M.
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