BIOGRAPHY

Stephen Haddelsey (centre) with two veterans of the 
Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1955-58):
Rainer Goldsmith (left) and Ken Blaiklock (right)

 If there is a common theme to my books, it is that all address a subject which has been ‘overlooked’ or consigned to oblivion – in my view unjustly.

In my first book, Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian (2000), I sought to bring back to public notice a highly gifted but much-maligned Anglo-Irish novelist who, in his early career, vied with Charles Dickens in terms of popularity and earning-power but who fell foul of Nationalist critics who effectively erased him from the canon of Irish literature.

My second book, Born Adventurer: The Life of Frank Bickerton (2005), dealt with another ‘lost’ figure – but one from an altogether different world. Frank Bickerton led an extraordinary life of adventure, playing a leading role in one of the key expeditions of the Heroic Age of polar exploration. He also hunted for pirate gold on R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island; fought with one of the elite squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War; travelled by train, plane and automobile the entire length of Africa during the golden age of the safari; and ultimately worked as a screenplay writer in the British film industry. His incredibly varied career was a delight to research and write about.

Ice Captain: The Life of J.R. Stenhouse (2008) tells the story of one of Frank Bickerton’s closest friends: another adventurer – but one whose almost miraculous tale of hardship and survival aboard the Aurora on Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 has been overshadowed by the much better-known story of the fate of the Endurance and Shackleton’s boat journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Like Bickerton, Stenhouse went on to an astonishing array of adventures, ranging from fighting the Bolsheviks in North Russia in 1918-19, to command of Captain Scott’s Discovery during the National Oceanographic Expedition of 1925-27, to heroic service with the Royal Navy in the Second World War.

Most recently, in Shackleton’s Dream: Fuchs, Hillary & The Crossing of Antarctica (2012), I have written the biography not of an individual but of an entire Antarctic expedition – but one which, like Lever, Bickerton and Stenhouse, has slipped into an undeserved obscurity. As I hope the book proves, ‘Modern Age’ expeditions such as the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (CTAE) of 1955-58, were as dangerous, demanding, heroic and, ultimately, as contentious as those of the ‘Heroic Age’.

In choosing to champion subjects which might well be described as ‘lost causes’ it might seem that I am tilting at windmills – but in each case, it appears to me that an injustice has been committed, sometimes deliberately as in the case of Charles Lever, but more often by accident, as in the cases of Bickerton, Stenhouse and the CTAE. Each of these stories deserves to be heard by a much wider audience than has hitherto been the case. And, of equal importance, each story needed to be recorded and preserved before it was lost forever.

Born in 1967, Stephen Haddelsey lives and works in Nottinghamshire. He is married with one son.

MY BOOKS

Ice Captain 

Ever since news of its astonishing fate first broke over ninety years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition has been regarded as one of the supreme examples of man’s determination to overcome insurmountable odds. In that incredible story it is generally acknowledged that one of the most dramatic episodes is the epic small-boat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia. What is less well known, is that the expedition gave rise to not one but two heroic feats of seamanship, with matters of life and death hinging upon each in equal measure. This book tells, for the first time, the story of the man responsible for that other, less celebrated but equally remarkable odyssey: Joseph Russell Stenhouse.

Shackleton’s trial began in the Weddell Sea; but, on the other side of Antarctica, the expedition’s second ship, the Aurora, suffered a fate which closely paralleled that of the Endurance. Torn from her moorings and driven out to sea by a ferocious gale, she, too, became trapped in pack-ice which, for ten months, sawed relentlessly at her hull, lifting the 600-ton ship from the water like a toy and straining her timbers to breaking point. With her rudder smashed and water cascading from her seams, under Stenhouse’s command, the Aurora eventually broke free and embarked upon her own extraordinary and desperate voyage to reach safe harbour.

In Ice Captain Stephen Haddelsey tells this thrilling story for the first time. It is a book not only for those interested in the history of Antarctic exploration, but for anyone thrilled by the adrenaline-fuelled heroism of a bygone age.

Born Adventurer

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14 gave birth to what Sir Ranulph Fiennes has called ‘one of the greatest accounts of Polar survival in history’. Stephen Haddelsey’s Born Adventurer tells a story of incredible endurance, courage, frustration and madness from the viewpoint of a key eyewitness: the man who became responsible for the expedition’s pioneering experiments with wireless telegraphy and aeroplanes and who also discovered the first meteorite in the Antarctic.

The AAE was, however, only one episode in a rich and colourful career. Bickerton was involved with the early stages of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Endurance Expedition and Born Adventurer sheds new light on this famous expedition. It follows him into the dogfights above the Western Front; to the wildernesses of Newfoundland and to East Africa during the ‘golden age’ of the African safari.

A cousin of Bickerton’s, Stephen Haddelsey was granted unique access to family papers and Born Adventurer is based largely on Bickerton’s journals and letters. Appealing to all those interested in the heroic age of Antarctic exploration and early aviation, it will also fascinate anyone who enjoys the thrills of a great adventure story.

Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian 

At the peak of his career, Charles Lever (1806-1872) was one of the most successful novelists in the English language, and the only mid-nineteenth century Irish novelist to vie with Charles Dickens in terms of popularity and income. Yet within three decades of his death his works had fallen into uninterrupted obscurity.

The light-heartedness of his early novels brought condemnation from Irish Nationalists who championed the serious role that literature could play in highlighting the desperate plight of Ireland’s indigenous population in the wake of the Famine. It is in Lever’s positive and thoughtful reaction to these criticisms that his profound contribution to Irish literature in English is to be found.

In his incisive critical study, Charles Lever: The Lost Victorian, Stephen Haddelsey charts the rise and fall of this gifted and much-maligned commentator on Irish affairs, and calls for a reappraisal of his position in the canon of Irish literature.