Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers

Edward Beauclerk Maurice was born in Somerset in 1913. After his experiences in the Arctic, he spent the war years in the New Zealand Navy, finally returning to England to live the rest of his years in Croydon and Sussex with his wife and three daughters. He died in 2003.

‘Arctic thrills abound: the bucking progress of an ice-breaker in a storm, the complex art of dog-sledging, and the ethereal wonders of the Northern Lights … Maurice’s memoir supllies a fascinating elegy to a vanishing world’ Daily Telegraph‘This is a beautifully unadorned, home-spun tale, with a lack of self-consciousness rare in travel literature … I was charmed; I could almost see the author running a finger over his old seal-skin boots as he told the tale of Arctic youth once again, to enraptured grandchildren. The author died last year; this book will live on beyond the circle of his family, and deserves to.’ Independent on Sunday‘The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers is as spare, gleaming and exhilarating as the Arctic wastes and the gentle, stoic Eskimos who had mastery of this realm … Beauclerk Maurice emerges as a man of warmth, humour and generosity. His adaptation to the Arctic, its extremes and its loneliness, matured him fast; his translucent prose is a sparkling and moving record.’ The Times