Living Dangerously - Tapa dura

First published in 1987, this book takes Ranulph Fiennes from his South African boyhood and army career to the series of breathtaking expeditions which have justly earned him the title of "the world's greatest living explorer". Since then, however, his determination to seek new challenges and, more importantly, to conquer them has led him to attempt to reach the North Pole without dogs or motorized equipment, to find the lost city of Ubar, hidden in the Arabian desert, and most recently, his extraordinary journey across the Antarctic to the South Pole. Writing with honesty and good humour, Ranulph Fiennes gives us a taste of the excitement, the hardship, the vital teamwork and the sheer courage that is the life of the modern explorer. He is an English hero in the classic mould - a man of whom it can be said that he has been everywhere and done everything.