BBC Television
documentary series presented by Benedict Allen
that profiles the lives of three influential 20th century British travel writers.
BBC Four controller Janice Hadlow commissioned the series from Icon Films
for broadcast as part of the channel's Journeys of Discovery season.
The series combines footage of travel writer Benedict Allen following in the footsteps of his subjects with interviews and archive footage to provide an insight into their lives.
Allen has written that the series was made to answer a question he had first asked himself when he lost his dog team in the Bering Strait
pack ice and his prospects looked grim.
"You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been." (Letter IV, August 19th 17-)
"With the confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters, I had re-trod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists." (Ch. 3)
"Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world." (Ch. 4 pg.40)
"The moon gazed on my midnight Eggan, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places." (Ch. 4 pg 40)
"How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” (Ch. 4 pg. 34)
"It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open..." (Ch. 5 pg 43)
"For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart." (Ch. 5 pg 43)
"I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings." (Ch. 9)
"A sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible." (Ch. 21)
"Great God! If for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself forever from my native country and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim." (Ch. 22)