Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: a modern take on the motifs of the weird nineteenth century.

5,476 words

It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;
Still we be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie. [1]

Even below the Missouri-Compromise Line, the mornings now have a delicious coolness, faltering on the edge of a “chill,” and I found myself yearning for an old-fashioned, nineteenth-century ghost story. (more…)

Christian Krohg, Leif Eriksson Discovers America, 1893.

1,702 words

After being stuck in the US for the last five months during the COVID-19 pandemic, I am finally back in Europe. Thanks to my friends in the Dissident Right, I get to spend the next few months in a small town that is overwhelmingly white. Reflecting on my travels this week reminded me of the many European historians and explorers (more…)

Illustration from the 1875 account of the expedition, Die zweite deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870 unter Führung des Kapitän Koldewey.

1,973 words

Germany undertook two Arctic expeditions from 1868 to 1870. The prospects of heroic adventure, national glory, and scientific advancement were all motivating factors. Polar exploration was hailed as a demonstration of Germanic courage and fortitude, as well as of the strength of German science and technology. (more…)

1,127 words

The Lost City of Z is based on a recent book of the same name by David Grann about the British explorer Percy Fawcett’s quest for a legendary ancient lost city in the Amazon rainforest. Its premise brings to mind epic films like Lawrence of Arabia or Apocalypse Now (indeed several scenes are uncannily reminiscent of Coppola). However ultimately The Lost City of Z lacks the grandeur of the former and the hallucinatory intensity of the latter. It is also burdened by the clutter of several secondary themes (romance/family, war, colonialism/racism, classism, sexism) and the ham-fisted insertion of modern liberal talking points into the plot.  (more…)

3,526 words

Georg Friedrich Kersting, “Faust in his Study”

Part 1 of 2

If I had to choose one word to identify the uniqueness of the West it would be “Faustian.” This is the word Oswald Spengler used to designate the “soul” of the West. He believed that Western civilization was driven by an unusually dynamic and expansive psyche. The “prime-symbol” of this Faustian soul was “pure and limitless space.” This soul had a “tendency towards the infinite,” a tendency most acutely expressed in modern mathematics.  (more…)

"Free soloists don't use any ropes or other gear—their skill is their only protection."

1,784 words

Courage—especially social courage—and adventure or thrill-seeking are not the same thing.

Courage is a quality most needed by members of the white racial movement. Conviction and the strength and spirit to stand up to totalitarian authorities and the crowd (often a lynch mob) are more important by far than conventionally “brave” danger-seeking traits.

Whites as a group rank high on the adventure/thrill-seeking scale, but true courage is in short supply. (more…)

1,200 words

Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary
The Crossing of Antarctica: The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1955–1958
London: Cassell, 1958

After Ernest Shackleton’s attempt at crossing Antarctica during the Great War, it would be nearly half a century before a new transantarctic bid would be made. (more…)

2,884 words

Roald Amundsen
The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the Fram, 1910–1912
London: Hurst & Company, 2001
(First Published in 1912 by John Murray)

Having reviewed Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s account of Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, and having over the Yuletide read Scott’s diaries from the latter, I deemed it opportune to read Roald Amundsen’s account of his pioneering journey to the South Pole. (more…)

1,995 words

Lennard Bickel
Shackleton’s Forgotten Men:
The Untold Tragedy of the Endurance Epic
London: Pimlico, 2001

The heroic age of Antarctic exploration ended with Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition of 1914–1916. And this, no doubt because of the relatively recent film starring Kenneth Branagh, is nowadays probably the best known of the many incredible adventures experienced by the early Antarctic explorers. (more…)

Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard, 1886–1959

2,240 words

Apsley Cherry-Garrard
The Worst Journey in the World
London: Pimlico, 2003

I remember watching the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic at some point in the early 1990s and marveling both at its grimness and the sheer Englishness of its sensibilities. (more…)