![]() ![]() The key to Scott’s legacy lies not in what happened in an Antarctic blizzard in 1912, but in what happened to Britain in the 150 years since his birth. It’s my view, though, that neither ‘Scott the tragic bungler’ nor ‘Scott the imperial martyr’ quite explain why he endures as a cultural icon over a century after his death. Elsewhere, he is portrayed as a charlatan whose bungling incompetence cost the lives of six men, including his own, in 1912 on the tragic Terra Nova expedition – a voyage whose tragic end was compounded by the fact Scott was beaten to the South Pole by the technically superior Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. At times, he has been venerated as an icon of Edwardian masculinity: a stoical, humble pioneer whose Antarctic expeditions discovered the Polar Plateau and made many significant contributions to scientific knowledge. ![]() Captain Robert Scott’s legacy will forever be an irreconcilable contradiction. ![]()
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