HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics. Now we clung to a battered little boat, 'alone, alone – all, all alone; alone on a wide, wide sea.' The ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914 was to be the first land-crossing of Antarctica. When disaster strikes, Sir Ernest Shackleton's party has no choice but make an impossible journey across an uncharted landscape of unstable ice floes, stormy seas and inhospitable glaciers. What follows is a desperate quest for survival, an epic true-story of derring-do from a true hero of the Golden age of Antarctic exploration. Against the poignant backdrop of World War I, Shackleton recounts the tale of his own battle, 'the White Warfare of the South,' a desperate struggle of human resilience, determination and teamwork against nature itself.