Helena Drysdale

It’s an alien species. Its habitat is scorching deserts or polar wastes, its diet Smash potato reconstituted with snow melt, and a concoction called ‘pre-stress’ drunk from a bottle that is also used to collect its own urine. Its pastimes include running marathons, writing books and climbing mountains. This is the Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wykeham Fiennes. Just reading about his exploits is exhausting. The first circumnavigation of the world via both Poles was succeeded by frequent attempts at other ‘firsts’ in both Arctic and Antarctic, mostly by dragging laden sledges over ice using nothing but man power.

In 1842 my cousin Charles Gascoyne was home from India on furlough, when he heard some devastating news. His regiment, the 5th Bengal Light Cavalry, had been retreating from Kabul through the winter-bound Khyber Pass where it was wiped out by Afghan tribesmen. A memorial tablet in St Peter’s Church in Calcutta still vividly records his fellow officers, ‘the lamented braves’, who though greatly outnumbered by a most treacherous foe in snowy wastes and rugged defiles, for several days and nights together, without shelter or even a tent, and suffering from extremes of cold, hunger and thirst, in the depths of winter, sold their lives dearly, as became British soldiers. Over 16,000 people died. Charles never recovered from the shock, and from the loss of so many friends.