The Secrets of Scott's Hut

I've been invited to join an extraordinary expedition

to a place I've dreamed of visiting since I was a boy.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott has been a hero of mine since before I can remember.

Many books have been written about his race to the South Pole in 1911.

But, a century on, new information is coming to light.

Somewhere out in the Antarctic, Scott built a hut where his team could survive in complete isolation.

When the hut was finally abandoned to the ice, 10,000 objects were left inside.

Today, it's still there and I'm on my way to find it.

Wow! That is incredible!

Few people have been to the hut and it's never been fully studied, but now a unique six year project

is in place, to forensically explore and conserve the hut and its contents.

It's completely overwhelming.

It's an extraordinary opportunity to see a part of Scott's world that's been lost for 100 years.

At last, the secrets of Scott's hut, frozen in time for a century, are being revealed.

Wow!

We've just landed on a temporary sea-ice runway.

This is an ocean under us now in this great big plane.

Scott in his wildest dreams could never have envisaged that worldwide travel could be like this.

The difference is that, for him, he would have had this slower acclimatisation.

He would have been cracking through this ice.

And I've just landed, and it's minus 20. It's bloody cold!

Scott's ship, the Terra Nova, left Cardiff on 15th June, 1910.

It took six months to reach McMurdo Sound in Antarctica.

A century on, and I've covered the same distance a little quicker.

Even today, getting to the hut is quite a challenge,

and, even if you make it, access is strictly controlled.

But Nigel Watson holds the key.

I've been granted special permission to spend time with the most extreme conservation team on Earth.

They're engaged in a six-year, £4 million project to save the hut

from complete collapse into the polar wilderness.

Because the hut lies in New Zealand's segment of the Antarctic, the expedition

will depart from New Zealand's Antarctic scientific headquarters, Scott Base.

PA SYSTEM: Hello, Scott Base, Scott Base...

Nick and Toby to the comms room please, Nick and Toby to the comms room.

It's only possible to visit the hut during the summer.

For the winter months of ferocious cold and continual darkness,

items are brought back to Scott Base to be worked on.

I don't know where that came from.

Diana Komejan and Cricket Harbeck are completing their winter work before heading back out to the hut.

Many of the things they work on have not been looked at for 100 years.

It's saying a medical supply box.

We have not looked into it, so...

-So this is the first time you've looked at this artefact?

-Yeah.

-How exciting!

-It's very exciting. Here we go.

-Wow!

First thoughts looking at this box, I imagine there's quite a lot of work that needs to go into this.

Oh, this is a lot of work. We've got iron, we have some glass.

Each of those materials is going to be treated a different way,

so there's quite a few challenges in here.

The conservators take every item, clean it, repair damage, re-fix peeling labels

and arrest any rust and decay that threatens to destroy it.

Supplied by...

Burroughs, Welcome & Co., London.

-Sodium...

-Diosulphate.

-That's a treasure trove.

-Yeah. There's a mousetrap, that's funny.

In their medical box?

Apparently!

To keep mice out of the medical box or to keep thieving fingers out?

-Who knows?

-I can see how, for Cricket and Diana, conservation is also detective work.

Through these objects, they are unpicking one of the great stories

in the history of Antarctic exploration.

Around the turn of the 20th century, world attention turned to the unmapped continent of Antarctica,

and the question of who would be first to get to the South Pole.

Stories of Antarctic exploration were filled with courage, endurance and tragedy.

None more so than that of Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

Everything being packed into this crate belonged to his expedition,

and has now been repaired, stabilised or cleaned.

As the winter's now over, it's time for these objects to be returned to the hut.

Lizzie Meek is head of conservation.

Her team have spent the winter working on these objects in the laboratory.

For her, this is the most nerve-racking part of the process.

So much work has been done on conserving them,

and now this is the moment where they're probably, you know, going to get the most movement in their lives,

and so we just want to make sure they're completely protected and well-secured on the journey out.

These are some of the most valuable, precious, polar artefacts in the world that are about to be dragged

for a couple of hours behind a bulldozer across Antarctica.

Before we head off in the morning, Lizzie insists that there's one view

every visitor should see before leaving Scott Base.

It's so beautiful here.

This is Castle Rock,

an iconic landmark that appears many times in Scott's diaries.

It's so different, I think, from some of those images I always had

of blizzards and the tents slapping in the wind.

And it's cold, don't get me wrong, it's cold today,

but it looks like such a calm...

happy place.

It's got a big bite out there.

It's funny, it's not until you look at a sign like that

that you realise how far away we are from civilisation.

But also,

the fact that London and Oslo in Norway are the two places

that are just about further than anywhere else in the world,

the two main protagonists in this whole thing.

Scott from England, Amundsen from Norway, came from the furthest-away place.

The first hint that Scott had competition came during the sea journey south.

Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer,

was believed to be heading for the North Pole in his ship, the Fram.

But while Scott was en route south, he received an enigmatic telegram

that simply read, "Beg leave to inform you, Fram heading Antarctic. Amundsen."

It was the first hint of what the world would later call "the race for the pole".

-How are you feeling?

-I can't wait to get out there.

When I was invited to make this visit, I met up

with Sir David Attenborough, a vocal campaigner on behalf of the hut and the places Scott went to.

Well, for anybody who cares about the history of human beings,

and who cares about the history of the human spirit,

these are irreplaceable, wonderful, extraordinary places.

You can sense, in a more powerful way than anywhere else on Earth,

the spirit, the human spirit

that drove Scott and his men to do the extraordinary, selfless, heroic things that they did.

It's strange to think that this small expedition

is what could preserve all of that for future generations.

Nigel Watson first travelled across this ice a decade ago.

It was on that journey that he fell in love with the hut

and resolved to fully explore it, saving the hut and its contents from complete disintegration.

The wind is the real enemy, as you know, in Antarctica.

I've been in a situation where I've been in camp

and we've had a storm that's blown severe winds for four, five days, where you can't get out of your tent.

I must say, when the wind is really blowing and you're working around

that hut, you'll find that you walk into that hut and it's a real sense of relief.

Even 100 years later, it's a place of refuge.

Scott's hut is on Ross Island, but connected to the mainland of Antarctica by a permanent ice shelf.

We're travelling north, from Scott Base to Scott's hut at Cape Evans,

the point where Scott was able to land the Terra Nova and establish his base for the expedition.

We're nearly here. We're about to round Cape Evans

and, as we pull into the bay,

we're going see the hut.

That's it, there. I can see the roof. Wow!

We're going to pull up into Home Beach and it will be right in front of you.

Careful there, yeah?

This is amazing.

You know when you've waited for a moment for so long?

It's the hut!

In this age of instant gratification,

where you're used to getting on a flight and you're there,

it's still taken me a week to get here.

Look, from the pictures, all this sand and everything around.

This must be one of the anchors.

So all of this, everything around I see, is from the hut. This is all...

It's all original.

Yeah, absolutely, you see some of the remnants of sleds,

a lot of detritus around the site that has been blown around.

But you can see how the weather of 100 years has just nailed back that beautiful patina on the wood.

-Can I go in?

-Absolutely.

Few people get to step through this door, and fewer still spend more than a few moments here.

I'm privileged to be spending a week exploring the hut.

And what's more, as the hut has been inaccessible for the winter,

we will be the first to step inside for many months.

It's completely overwhelming.

The hut, and every object in it, came on board the Terra Nova.

This was to be the base for scientific work, everyday life, and great adventure.

All part of Scott's plan for his two-year Antarctic expedition.

I recognise places in here.

Look, this...

There's this fantastic photograph.

And then this is the table, I imagine...

The great picture of Scott celebrating his birthday.

He must have been here, and the flags hanging...

I assume behind here is where Scott was.

This is just amazing!

This has to be Scott's bunk.

If I remember, there's a picture of him sitting here working, writing at his desk.

It's all, it's all kind of falling into place.

You feel their presence, you definitely feel

those years of inhabitation.

Wow!

An hour later, a lone tractor makes its way around the headland,

with six crates of conserved objects about to be returned.

-BEEPING

-Pretty surreal, the beeping of a tractor,

backing up some of the most priceless and important artefacts in polar history.

Let's get going!

-No rushing!

-OK, no rushing.

Could you imagine if you were in a museum back in England,

these would be handled SO delicately, white gloves,

there'd probably be trolleys and pick-up trucks to do it,

but out here, you know, it's just laborious.

-Onto this table?

-Yes.

All these supplies originally had to be unloaded, and here are all these tools going up the beach once again.

It's like history repeating itself.

These objects were first carried up this beach in January 1911.

The Terra Nova had arrived in Antarctica, and Cape Evans

was chosen as the best place to offload everything from the ship.

A round trip to the South Pole of 1,500 miles on foot would take an entire summer, but until then,

the hut would be a place to prepare, undertake scientific research, and wait out the oncoming winter.

There has been a steady stream of cases, passing along the shore all day.

The long, level beach has enabled Bowers to arrange his stores in the most systematic manner.

I tell you what, this is bringing back some memories.

I've spent many hours man-hauling loads a little smaller than this one.

Ooh, that is quite...

This isn't my first visit to Antarctica.

Two years ago, I took part in the first race to the South Pole for a century.

It was an extreme challenge, but it only served to make me

more interested in the trials Scott went through back in 1911.

I'd hoped that this time I'd get to stay in Scott's hut, but I'm told there's no chance of that.

The building has been preserved by the cold,

and the warmth of sleeping bodies

could defrost the hut and bring on decay.

Instead, we're making camp on the beach.

Not easy this tent stuff.

HE SIGHS

So, my first night camping back in Antarctica

since I did my trek to the South Pole, but the wind is certainly beginning to pick up.

Good to be back though.

A world away from the frozen wastes of Antarctica, Scott remains an instantly-recognised name,

but it seems we still can't agree on what kind of man he was.

Clearly, for the first 60 years after his death,

Scott was celebrated as the archetypal British hero.

A national icon, played as such in the 1948 film by John Mills.

9,000 feet up.

The barrier and the glacier behind us.

It should be level going now.

All the way to our goal.

Then in 1979, the writer Roland Huntford studied the records and came to a very different conclusion.

Was Scott a hero? In my book, no.

He was not a hero, because he was a failure.

In his book, Roland Huntford makes a series of allegations,

attacking Scott for serious weaknesses in his leadership style.

He was responsible for the deaths of those five men.

He led better men than himself to their death.

The effect of Huntford's work was huge,

and Scott's portrayal in popular culture changed dramatically.

Good day, sir. Wheeeee!

Get up, you bloody fool.

By 1985, Scott was being portrayed as an irascible, impatient, unreasonable man,

out of touch with his own team, obsessively chasing Shackleton's record, set three years earlier.

We're falling further and further behind, and it simply won't do.

Further behind who?

Shackleton, who else?

The explorer, Ranulph Fiennes, was so angered by this criticism,

that he set about writing a book to counter Huntford's claims.

Scott was not just organised, Scott was brilliant.

Captain Scott would have gone huge places if he'd stayed in the Royal Navy.

He was a brilliant bloke.

Of course Scott failed.

He wanted to be first at the Pole and he wasn't.

What Scott did at the forefront of science was a huge success.

Scott's expeditions produced more scientific information from Antarctica

than all the other international polar expeditions of the first half of the 20th century.

That is incredible.

The historical facts are that Amundsen won the race.

Personally, I prefer winners to losers.

My second day in camp begins, and the weather has changed.

A violent wind has ripped the outer layer of the tent in the night.

I thought it was making a bit of noise.

The problem is, out here,

the wind's really come in.

This is, well, probably gusting around 30, 35 miles per hour,

and you can see what damage it can do.

And in fact, to get the wind chill,

you take a temperature, which I know today is about minus 15,

and add it to the wind speed, so that's about minus 45.

So exposed skin like this, at minus 45,

a couple of minutes and you're going to get frostnip.

That's where the top layer of the skin freezes,

and after that, you'll get frostbite,

which is what Scott's team suffered a lot from.

So, I'll try and cover up.

I'm going to check the rest of the tent.

I dread to think what it would have been like in this weather in the clothes of 1911.

There's one place where today's conservation team can get warm.

A Portakabin serves as a place to eat, meet and escape the elements.

We've drawn up a rota, and on our first full day in camp, I'm on breakfast duty.

Well, this is a bit of respite from the wind.

SHE LAUGHS

It's a little breezy out there(!)

It's also a very useful place to get my bearings.

OK, here's my map of Antarctica here.

We've got due south that way, north up this way.

Here's the enormous continent of Antarctica.

You've got the Ross Sea over here. But this area,

coloured green on the map, this is the Ross Ice Shelf.

This is the size of France, it's absolutely enormous.

Captain Scott came in on the Terra Nova, landed on Ross Island.

So this was basically the plan. They were going to go all the way across the ice shelf, 425 miles,

an enormous distance, before turning up the Beardmore Glacier.

That's 120 miles up to high altitude.

This was going to be a really tough leg, where they would then have their final, 350-mile march

to their goal, the South Pole.

My next job is to provide a little light, so that the conservators' work can begin.

The windows of the hut have been blocked by snow over winter,

so, just as in Scott's day,

someone's got to get up onto the roof and clear it.

There's such a rich mine of stuff in here, there's so much to look at.

I don't really know where to begin.

But this coat here, with its ends here all weathered,

and you look at this jumper, with all the salt stains on it,

and I wonder whether that's from the ocean,

but then I've got this image of them man-hauling and perhaps sweating, leaving all of these stains.

It's amazing, when you first come into this hut it's very dark, and then as your eyes begin to adjust,

you suddenly start making out some of these 10,000 items in here,

and the closer you look, the more you uncover parts of Scott's story, I suppose.

My first real surprise is that there's so much scientific equipment in the hut.

It's everywhere.

Clearly, this was far more than just a race to the pole.

Nigel Watson is the executive director of The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust.

During a visit in 2004, he realised that the hut was close to collapse

and resolved to save it, before it vanished into the snow.

He initiated an extraordinary conservation project to preserve the hut in its original location.

Lizzie Meek is Head of Conservation. Lizzie and her small team are two years into a six-year project

to explore and save everything in the hut from disintegration.

I was wondering about the salt that's kind of spilling out of this jar here.

I've seen this before, and what happens is, the moisture

gets absorbed by the salt and the salt expands, and then it's...

See, it's pushed the lid.

She selects objects to be returned to Scott Base, where they're cleaned, decay is arrested,

peeling labels are re-stuck, and even century-old cheeses are stabilised.

-Although, um... You want to have a sniff?

-Yeah, can I?

Wow, that's ripe. That might be beyond ripe!

-Yeah, yeah.

-Once work is complete, each object is returned to the hut,

but sometimes, the conservation process throws up some surprises.

When we were working on the safelight, we found that, not only had it been modified inside,

but there was this really cool little object inside it.

This is a photographer's magnifying loop.

So that was just hidden inside, was it?

Just sitting inside, that's right.

-That must be quite exciting for you, when you're uncovering these items?

-Oh, it's very exciting.

We get excited anyway, seeing the object be revealed through the process.

But to find something extra that no-one knew was there is special.

Slowly, this work is filling in all sorts of previously unknown details about Scott's expedition.

Scott kept a detailed diary, right up to his last day in a frozen tent out on the ice shelf.

I want to use this opportunity to piece together the diaries

with the discoveries in the hut, in the hope of establishing what kind of leader Scott really was.

'We took up our abode in the hut today.

'I found Bowers making cubicles, so instructed him to build a bulkhead of cases

'which shuts off the officers' space from the men's, I am quite sure to the satisfaction of both.'

"SS Terra Nova." So these obviously came from the ship, but they weren't just used for supplies.

This was very much a division.

This divided the officers and the gentlemen, the scientists from the men.

What this wall for me, this wall that's partially here is illustrating and highlighting,

is that all those photographs we see down in this part of the hut,

but here, right over here, it's the barest part of the hut.

This is where the men lived.

And yet they were integral to this expedition.

They were. These were the engine, if you like, the second tier of men that,

the people you don't hear the stories about, guys who had great Antarctic experience.

Day, Crean was a classic, Evans, who died on the Pole,

the strongest man of the party, they were all the men from the mess deck.

They're not the famous officers we know about.

We know that Scott's Norwegian rival, Amundsen, had no such class division in his hut.

Was it a sign of weakness that Scott, the British navy captain, segregated his expedition,

not only distancing officers from men, but distancing himself from everyone else?

Is this private cabin the reflection of a man divorced from his own team,

as Roland Huntford claimed, unwilling to consider any opinion but his own?

Scott's shore party was made up of 25 men, making it the biggest Antarctic expedition of its age.

It had five officers, including Captain Scott himself, 11 scientists and nine unranked men.

Though most of the objects in the hut were left by the officers, it's a space on the unranked side

of the divide that perhaps tells us most about Scott's character.

The kitchen is both intriguing and revealing.

And we've got all of these fantastic items here, some of which I recognise.

So Colman's, and I can see Heinz Baked Beans.

We've been having some of those out here ourselves.

But you've got some more unusual things like Real Turtle Soup. That's just extraordinary.

So, how much of this stuff was just off the shelf, effectively bought from a supermarket,

and how much was specifically for the expedition?

Well, a lot of it was off the shelf.

A lot of it was sponsored. A lot of sponsors came on board.

There's great publicity shots of those early products.

A lot of things were made

specifically for the expedition,

for example the Bovril Sledging Rations,

and other objects like Huntley & Palmers Biscuits. They were crafted

with a special formula for those biscuits for the expedition.

Scott knew that his expedition would be the focus of the newly-emerging newspaper industry.

He realised that manufacturers would contribute generously in return for shots like this.

Much of the contents of this well-stocked kitchen

have clearly been specifically supplied in return for publicity.

Scott was creating the concept of sponsorship.

These pictures were taken by Herbert Ponting.

He was one of Scott's truly innovative appointments

and was clearly considered incredibly valuable.

Apart from Scott himself, he was the only other person allowed his own space.

Herbert Ponting was a photographer with a name for capturing stunning images.

In the past, artists were employed to record expeditions by hand.

But Scott was media-savvy and the first explorer to fully realise the potential for photography.

He employed Ponting to document a great heroic adventure,

to engage the press and to fulfil sponsorship deals.

Scott was making sure the world saw his expedition his way.

Cricket, this is 8130...

The team are returning some of Ponting's items that were taken away to be worked on over winter.

Lizzie is responsible for ensuring that everything is returned undamaged

and replaced where it was found.

So this is Ponting's darkroom, which is a separate unit within the hut, isn't it?

It is. It's closed off. It was actually his bedroom.

He got his own room, where he had this bunk that folded back against the wall.

Lucky sod! Although it probably was a bit whiffy with all the chemicals.

I can imagine that, but probably good in the height of summer when there was no darkness here.

-Yes.

-It's probably the darkest room in there.

-Hence the name.

What really strikes me coming in here is, if you think about it,

Ponting had one of the biggest sections in the whole hut, to process these photographs.

It was very much a modern expedition.

They really relied on all of this media material that was going to go back to feed the newspapers,

and, I suppose, to please their sponsors.

And some of the most iconic polar images ever were created in this lab.

And not just still images.

This extraordinary film was developed by Ponting in his darkroom in the hut.

When it was premiered back in Britain, it caused a sensation.

People flocked to see it.

Ponting had turned Scott into a celebrity and a hero.

Having only spent a few hours in the hut, I'm already getting a real sense of Scott.

He imposed a class structure, a reflection of Edwardian society.

But he was also an innovator, using the latest techniques to get his story on to the news stands.

Scott was a man who understood how his world worked.

But there's something unavoidable that's not reflected in the diaries or the photographs.

The hut is a dark, shadowy place.

It's boxed in and slightly oppressive, which is strangely close to how Scott is sometimes described.

It's a strange feeling, accentuated by the fact that, outside the hut,

though it's still bitterly cold, we have bright sunlight right around the clock.

I don't think you ever get used to 24-hour sunlight.

I found this fantastic extract from Scott's diary.

It says, "Tonight is absolutely calm with glorious, bright sunshine.

-"Several people were sunning themselves at 11 o'clock at night."

-HE LAUGHS

Arriving in January, Scott knows that the 24-hour sunlight

is going to give way to 24-hour darkness in about 12 weeks' time.

So no sooner had they set up their comfortable hut here at Cape Evans, then they were off again.

One team of scientists headed due west, out to here.

Another team headed east, over there.

And Scott, meanwhile, and his team

begin laying depots along this line, up to about 120 miles.

This has food, fuel, everything they needed, ready for their great assault south.

But Scott's photographer, Ponting, had a journey of his own in mind.

He wanted to travel 12 miles around Ross Island to Cape Royds,

to photograph the hut left behind

by the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton just three years earlier.

He was keen to see how the famous hut compared with Scott's hut at Cape Evans.

Look! Shackleton's hut.

That's Royds there.

That is fantastic!

Shackleton was popular, with an informal style of leadership.

In 1907, he'd got closer to the pole than anyone else.

His expedition was considered the greatest feat of polar exploration.

And as arch-rival, Scott was obsessed by him.

It has a really homely air to it, this hut.

It's still got name tags on some of these socks here.

Reminds me of school.

It definitely has... a completely different feel

to Scott's hut at Cape Evans.

It feels much more...

Well it feels much less divided, for a start.

There's a little cubicle, curtains that you can close behind,

but it feels like they were one, rather than a divided party.

And coming in here now...

..I'm loath to admit it, but I think I would prefer to have been on Shackleton's team than Scott's.

It looks like they had a happier time.

I don't know if that's because of history. History is ingrained within the huts.

If I think now back to Cape Evans, it's just steeped in tragedy, but is that because we know the outcome?

Would it have had that feeling had I not known the whole story?

I could quite happily spend a year here.

Just have to persuade my wife.

But it's what outside the hut that really caught Ponting's attention.

Eager to capture as much as possible for the first time, he spent days photographing the colony of penguins

here at Cape Royds, to amaze audiences back home.

And I must admit, a century on, nothing's changed.

It's still an amazing sight.

What an amazing place. Antarctica's like layers on layers on layers.

So today, we've got the fantastic heritage of Shackleton with his hut,

but then we've got a smoking volcano over there, the Barne Glacier,

a frozen ocean,

and as if that wasn't enough, we've got penguins behind.

It's incredible!

But back in 1909, Shackleton failed to get to the pole.

That goal was still open to Scott's 1911 expedition, down the coast at Cape Evans.

Scott's hut was rediscovered in 1947,

and first chipped out of the ice by a New Zealand expedition in 1960.

In the years following, occasional expeditions, happening upon the hut, took mementos and keepsakes.

The New Zealand government took action, insisting that all visits are accompanied

and severe penalties imposed on anyone removing artefacts.

Now, the Antarctic Heritage Trust is studying everything in the hut,

and new things are continually coming to light.

-Can you believe that?

-What, this little thing here?

Yeah, look, I'll bring it out.

-So what have we got here?

-I think we've got the smallest book in the building.

It's amazingly small!

It's one of these things we keep discovering.

It keeps giving up these secrets after 100 years.

Do you know what book it is?

We don't, but it looks like "Windsor"...

-The Merry Wives Of Windsor. That's Shakespeare.

-Pocket edition!

Just amazing. What would be the point of bringing a book this small?

Well, we don't know, but perhaps it was, you know,

tucked inside your jacket on your sledging journey.

It's so delicate and so small.

The conservation work in the hut involves logging and saving everything from decay.

It's a £4 million project that most people will never get to experience.

I've had a slightly uneasy day.

I'm not sure what I think

about the effort to preserve the huts all the way down here.

Because on the one hand, I know the huts have to be preserved,

and it's the most incredible effort that goes into it.

But preserving it for who?

And I'm struggling to come to terms with the validity of doing that.

Especially the fact that they've preserved all of these pieces.

They've spent many, many hours,

and now it's going back into the same environment

that started destroying them in the first place.

It seems like a vicious circle to me.

I think I need to sleep on this one.

Good night.

-All of those Rising Suns can go.

-So where do they all live?

-They're all up there.

-So on that bare...

Today, Lizzie's returning some items to the kitchen that were taken away to be conserved over the winter.

-Such beautiful bottles, these.

-They are.

Do you think the right decision was made to preserve it here, in situ?

I do, and, I mean, I suppose I work to preserve that first memory I have of walking through that door.

And although not many people get to experience that, nevertheless, people do.

A lot of historic sites are like that.

We had the choice between actively contributing to the destruction of this site

by picking it up and taking it somewhere else, or saying,

"Actually, we think that we can do something here to preserve it."

OK, this is 12.

It just strikes me as slightly strange in some ways that you're

taking those items from effectively a controlled environment back into an uncontrolled environment.

-Is that true?

-In some ways it's an uncontrolled environment,

but when you think about how objects deteriorate, we've got some big things on our side here.

It's really cold - that slows down deterioration.

So for 11 months of the year, nothing much is going on.

It's also dark a lot of the time, and inside this building there's not much light.

So light is a key factor of damage.

It's the beginning of my fourth day at the hut and I'm settling into the Cape Evans way of life.

One of the most common questions I get asked about expeditions is,

"How do you go to the loo?" And I have to admit I was wondering that about Scott and his men.

And this is actually their loo block.

Out in the front, beautiful view if you ask me.

If you look in there you'll see it's full of snow now,

but actually, not too bad considering.

But what's amazing is that they remained segregated out here.

There was the officers' side and the men's side.

Today they've got pretty strict protocol out here.

It's all about keeping Antarctica this pristine clean environment.

So today, for example, you have to poo in a bag.

And that's all bagged up and then put on a ship

and sent back to New Zealand.

And apparently it costs a couple of quid per kilo,

so that is very expensive poo.

I'm really starting to imagine what it must have been like

for those men, completely isolated here for two years.

So quiet.

I think for me it's moments like this that I start...

thinking about home. It's beautiful,

but you can't help but think about what you've left behind.

Scott had only just married. He had a young boy about the same age

as my little boy, Ludo.

I can't imagine leaving them

for two, three years.

You've got those iconic photographs in the hut of him sitting at the map

table, and they're behind. They're all these photographs.

For me they're very poignant,

of the family that he's left behind.

I notice that's what's missing -

the pictures have gone.

Perhaps they were returned to his family

or were taken by trophy hunters decades ago.

But the heart has gone out of this little cabin.

Before I set out to the Antarctic, I visited the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge,

where I came across a series of letters that have never been published

and have never appeared on television before.

They were the private letters of Scott to his wife Kathleen,

and have always been considered too personal to make public.

But I think glimpsing the personal Scott is key to knowing the man...

..and the custodians agreed to let me see them.

My own darling,

perhaps it needed this separation to show how much you are to me.

Does this letter express a little of what it will mean to me

to see your sweet face again? It can only express a little.

The thing that cannot be said too often, the amazing fact

is that I love you so much

the world for me must centre about you.

This tells a very different tale.

Yes, it does. This is a series of love letters, essentially.

You say love letters. I think of Scott as being a stiff-upper-lipped

officer in the Navy who wouldn't show their emotions,

almost emotionally barren.

That was his public face. This is the private man, the family man.

It's clear that Scott adored his wife.

By all accounts, Kathleen Bruce was both striking and charming.

She was a talented artist, having trained under Rodin,

and intellectually she was every bit Scott's equal.

Setting out on the expedition, Scott's only regret appears to have

been leaving behind his wife and his son, Peter, not yet a year old.

"Dear heart, all this in one sense seems to be

"asking you to sacrifice your own interest and the Boodle Doo's..."

And of course Boodle Doo is Peter, her son, their nickname for him.

"..to the expedition. But I know you would wish it that way.

"So we act straight to ourselves and the world."

I think that's very telling.

I love you as much as ever and wish I could get a glimpse of you.

I have this little red Morocco case with your picture in front and the Boodle Doo at the back.

Give him my best love and ever so many kisses...

My dearest dearest, here is... My own darling, I am writing to you...

My sweet lady, I told you we should be cut off from...

Some of them are intensely personal, and I think it's really interesting

to see how he feels he can write completely frankly to Kathleen

in a way he can't, perhaps, express himself to other members

of his team actually down in the Antarctic.

Being here in the Antarctic, things are starting to fall into place.

I now see Scott less as an iconic figure

and increasingly as something more human.

Scott was an animal lover.

He was fond of the ponies and dogs on the expedition.

There are signs of animals everywhere, but just outside the hut, buried in the snow,

was something I hadn't expected to find.

And behind here is one of the expedition dogs.

But you can still its collar.

That is unbelievable. Look at that!

-Does that chain go to the collar?

-It does. So it's still chained up.

I can't believe there is a dog with a collar still on it chained up here.

Because, for me, the dogs, you know that was one of the key differences between Scott and Amundsen.

This for me is a really significant part of the heritage of this site.

It was known that dog-sledding was an effective means of polar transport,

but Scott had chosen to rely on a number of different methods,

landing with 17 Siberian ponies.

They quickly proved unreliable.

Six had perished on this short depot laying journey.

This put into real doubt how useful they were going to be

the following spring for their great assault south.

But also, significantly, they were forced to lay the final depot

30 miles short of their proposed point.

It was 30 miles that would make the difference between life and death.

Scott was still fretful over the telegram he'd received on the outward journey,

but had no way of tracking the Norwegian expedition.

On the 8th February, the scientific party that had taken

the ship out East suddenly returned with shocking news.

While over here, they'd actually bumped

into the Norwegian Roald Amundsen.

He had his ship, The Fram, dogs, many men.

Suddenly, that telegram made complete sense.

They were heading south, too. As soon as winter was over,

they would also be heading for exactly the same goal.

The race was on.

Scott had chosen ponies, believing that it was impossible to get large numbers of dogs to Antarctica.

Amundsen, it seemed, had no such concerns,

and had landed with over 100 dogs.

There is no doubt that Amundsen's plan is a very serious menace to ours.

I never thought he could have got so many dogs safely to the ice.

His plan for running them seems excellent.

But above and beyond all, he can start his journey early in the season -

an impossible condition with ponies.

Nevertheless, there was no way of changing course, and Scott was committed to working with

the Siberian ponies he'd brought and had stables built along the outside of the hut to house them.

A century on, and the stables are still throwing up surprises.

Oh, that smell!

THEY LAUGH

Oh, it smells like old milk!

It's a sledging...

ration bag, one of the cotton bags that they used.

I think that's either cheese or butter.

I think you've got the world's oldest pound of butter there, Ben!

-Wow.

-Look... It's...

-Can you see it?

-Yeah.

-It's got Fern Leaf written on the label.

It's part of a supplies they brought out from New Zealand en route.

It's very rancid butter, 100-year-old butter.

We dug this up from under one of the bays here in the stables

and it's more likely that perhaps it got forgotten about or dropped

under some scoria over it, or snow,

and then it was lost to time until we were in here excavating.

But it certainly hasn't fared well over that 100 years, by the smell of it.

Food items are among the most intriguing things that Scott left behind,

partly because they give us a glimpse into the brands and tastes of Edwardian England,

but also because they speak of the everyday lives of the men.

Most of what's in this is what's known as Bowers' Annex.

He was in charge of the stores and he built an annexe

on the side of the hut. It was made of packing cases.

These boxes, now being sent off for conservation,

are actually full of flour.

Yeah, if you think of artefacts being conserved, preserved,

I have this image of it being paintings or furniture.

And here we're doing flour.

Does it at least...? I mean, it's kind of strange,

-or is it not for you?

-It's not strange for me.

I'm used to it. It's really interesting.

You just never know what you're going to get next when you walk into the hut, you know.

It could be a tool, it could be some food,

it could be a piece of clothing, and it's always interesting.

Little was known about the effects of high altitude on diet in 1911.

Although Scott carefully calculated rations, at 10,000 feet above sea

level, they were burning many more calories than they were consuming.

Scott and his men were literally starving.

From the food stuffs found in the hut, we now know that was not the case while they were here.

It's clear that meals were substantial, could run to several courses

and included the finer things that gentlemen of the expedition would have been used to.

This was part of Scott's strategy.

No matter what hardships might have to be faced, there would always be a good meal at the end,

while they were staying in the hut at any rate.

Scott's secret weapon to keeping up morale was Thomas Clissold.

Clissold was a talented 25-year-old cook

who could serve up a range of dishes more usually found

in a good restaurant, or improvise with the seals and penguins that came his way.

I don't know about you, but when I look at some of those Ponting photos of him,

he has quite a contemporary look about him. His hair was quite short,

little bit of almost a goatee going on. He looks quite modern.

He does look pretty cool, actually pretty hot!

Which can't be said for all of them!

But Clissold was more than just a good cook.

He was also something of a mechanic, begging wires and batteries

from around the hut to create his own gadgets.

He'd rigged up this really cool alarm for working out when the bread dough had risen.

As it rose it hit a lever which kind of went up to a switch

and made this alarm ring, and then if that wasn't enough, then a light would start blinking

above his bed, and so the whole thing was set up so he could have a nap while the bread was rising.

Thomas Clissold made such an impression with his gadgets

that he found himself being awarded the greatest honour of all.

Scott had been working on an innovation.

He'd decided to experiment with new technology and had brought with him three motorised sledges.

Seeing Clissold's skill with gadgets, Scott asked him to join the team working with the sledges, which

would mean, in the spring time, leaving his kitchen and heading south with the polar party.

For an unranked 25-year-old cook, it was the chance of a lifetime.

And for me, it's proof that Scott was anything but blind to the talent around him, wherever it lay.

Each year as winter approaches,

the sea begins to freeze

and the solid mass of Antarctica doubles in size.

In 1911, as the sea froze, the Terra Nova had to leave.

As the ship would not be able to return until the following summer,

the men left behind were now cut off from the rest of the world.

With no way of restocking, Scott had to ensure that a catastrophic fire

in the hut wouldn't destroy everything they had.

He decided to scatter hoards of food and fuel in small clusters

on the hillside above the hut, and, a century on, many are still here.

Look at this!

I mean, this looks... this looks fresh!

It looks like lentils.

The detective in me is returning now. I assume this is flour.

I could be wrong now.

Look at all of these.

No!

Look, look, look, look, look!

Huntley, that's got to be the Huntley and Palmer biscuits.

This is just incredible.

On April 23rd, the 25 occupants of the Cape Evans Hut have their

last sight of the sun before the 24-hour darkness of a polar winter.

It will be four months before they see the sun again.

The men make notes in their diaries

and busy themselves as best they can.

Sunday, and the inhabitants of the hut are occupied with their own affairs.

Ponting is reading an exciting love story.

Oates is studying his great hero Napoleon.

For myself, clothes washing is the order of the day.

When that is finished I will be sewing patches on underpants.

At breakfast we discussed Amundsen.

Most of those here consider he will reach the pole first if he's not driven out to sea.

On starry nights, I shall look at the Great Bear

and you will also look at it sometimes.

And I shall look at the moon

as it floods our snows with its silver light.

The point was raised as to what a man should do if he were

to break down on the polar journey, thereby becoming a burden to others.

Oates unhesitatingly and emphatically expressed the opinion that there was only one possible course -

self sacrifice. He thought that a pistol should be carried and that

if anyone breaks down, he should have the privilege of using it.

Perhaps the winter of 1911 on Cape Evans was best summed up by the one Norwegian on Scott's team,

the ski expert and diarist Tryggve Gran.

It is difficult to keep a diary.

One day is just as monotonous as the rest.

Under such conditions, weak nerves will either get stronger or crack.

There is so little happening.

The tedium is broken briefly on midwinter's day by a great party.

Whilst revelry was the order of the day within our hut,

the elements without seemed desirous of celebrating the occasion

with equal emphasis and greater decorum.

The eastern sky was massed with swaying auroral light,

the most vivid and beautiful display that I had ever seen.

It is impossible to witness such a beautiful phenomenon

without a sense of awe.

One of the most extraordinary events of that winter was a journey.

Through the dark and bitterly cold winter, few people travelled far from the hut at Cape Evans.

But one man couldn't be held back.

Edward Wilson was an artist, a doctor, a devoted Christian

and Scott's chief scientist. He was passionately committed

to making scientific discoveries at any cost.

Wilson wanted to be the first to bring the eggs of the emperor penguin back to Britain,

eggs that are only laid in the middle of the polar winter.

He was insistent on taking two men on a five-week hike

through polar storms in permanent darkness to Cape Crozier.

It was one of the most taxing,

extreme and hostile journeys ever undertaken in the name of science.

Thankfully, we're taking a faster route.

Nigel is coming to make a record of what remains, and I've taken the opportunity to join him.

I don't think there's any other way to describe this

other than a godforsaken place!

This is about as bleak as you can get.

Yeah, we're on a very exposed sphere here, on the edge of Ross Island.

It must have been absolute sheer hell to be here

in the middle of winter in 24-hour darkness, shivering.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard talked about

the fact you know it's bad when you get frostbite inside your sleeping bag.

It was so cold that the men's teeth began to crack,

and even though we're here in summer and in good weather,

this is easily the coldest, bleakest place we've encountered.

If I ever think I've had any hardships in my life, on any of my trips...

Pales into insignificance.

This is like hell on Earth, this spot here.

Cape Crozier is a truly desolate place.

But amazingly, there are still remains of the stone igloo that the three men built for shelter.

This looks pretty insignificant, but this, can you see the green canvas?

-Yes. Green? It looks white now.

-They used this in the rock igloo

as a roof

with their sledges on top,

and the account was that when the big storm came in,

they started stuffing everything they could,

socks, bits of cloth, anything they could into the gaps in the rock

to stop the snow coming in.

But this was such a huge storm and it raged so hard,

they said the screaming was unbelievable, the noise.

And eventually they knew they were going to lose the roof

and the canvas went and here we had

the three men huddled in here in their sleeping bags,

in the open elements, with a storm raging.

Nigel is keen to record what remains to help build up his understanding of what Scott's team did.

For me, the trip has brought home a key point about this whole story -

it wasn't a dash to the pole.

Scott's British Antarctic Survey of 1911 was a scientific enterprise

supporting no fewer than 11 scientists.

These pioneers in biology, geology and physics measured the landscape, mapped skies, studied the climate

and returned discoveries for analysis at home, including the eggs of the emperor penguin.

I really can't help but think that this can't have helped their cause.

Bowers and Wilson,

you know, two men that perished in the tent with Captain Scott,

they can't have had time to recover from an experience like this.

Here are Bowers, Wilson and Cherry-Garrard about

to set out into the darkness of the polar winter for Cape Crozier.

This is their return just five weeks later.

And just three months after this photo was taken,

two of these men would accompany Scott to the pole.

The Crozier party looked more weather-worn than anyone I have yet seen.

It is for me now to note the strains that they have imposed upon themselves,

and the lessons that their experiences teach for our future guidance.

As the winter ended, all attention was focused on preparations for the journey to the South Pole.

Each day Scott carefully monitored the temperature, the weather and the first flickers of sunlight.

It's the famous stables in here. The smell is just extraordinary.

You really get a sense of what it must have been like.

But these were pretty frustrating times for Scott.

He knew that not far away, Amundsen was waiting with his much hardier dogs.

And even as the light returned after winter, they had to wait.

The ponies simply couldn't go out until it was warm enough.

Though it's certainly cold, it's only by spending the winter here at

Cape Evans, as Scott did, that you encounter the worst temperatures.

At minus 30, any exposed skin is vulnerable to frostbite in moments,

which presents a challenge when nature calls.

Diana has just made a discovery that suggests that this was

one problem that Scott's party had gone some way to solving.

That is hilarious.

Is that willy hole?

That is amazing! So they could go to the loo.

I've never seen anything like that in all my life.

I thought I'd seen everything. It even has a little closing strap so that you could...avoid drafts.

You wouldn't want to get frostbite there, would you?

OK, Cricket, shall I pop those down there?

Sure, we'll take a look at them. What have you got there?

Trousers with a willy hole.

-Very nice!

-How are we going to pack that so we don't crush that?

THEY LAUGH

We pay these guys a lot of money.

Although the expedition was using basic clothing by today's standards,

it seems they were using the very best available.

Much of the clothing left here in the hut was specially designed by companies like Burberry and Jaeger.

This project has revealed that the clothing of 1911, being of entirely natural fibres,

compared surprisingly well with modern counterparts at keeping out the cold.

Where Scott suffered was in carrying the bedding.

These 1911 reindeer sleeping bags are cumbersome and heavy

compared to modern sleeping bags, and doubled in weight once wet.

Wow, look at that.

An old tweed cap.

-No way, I've never seen that before.

-Have you not?

-No, It's fantastic.

It actually looks in quite good condition.

-It's gorgeous, yeah. I think Clissold would look good in this.

-Oh, do you?

Clissold, the inventive cook, and the other 14 men selected

by Scott are now fully engaged in preparing for the journey south.

Sunday, October 8th,

about five, a telephone message from Nelson's igloo

reported that Clissold had fallen from a berg and hurt his back.

It appears that Clissold was acting as Ponting's model and that he dropped six feet onto a sharp angle

in the berg before he grew unconscious.

Tuesday, October 17th.

I have had to tell Clissold that he cannot go out with the motor party, to his great disappointment.

Hooper replaces him.

On the 24th October, the motorised sledges headed out without Clissold.

And it was over the next few days that 11 men, ponies and dogs, all set out for the pole.

The expedition had begun.

But it would be some time before those men left behind in the hut

would hear news of how they were getting on.

While his heavy equipment meant that Ponting was unable to photograph the journey south, Scott was.

He's been accused of being stubborn and old fashioned.

But what few people know is that be became a pupil of Ponting

so that he could photograph the journey south himself.

Amazingly, those pictures were lost and only recently turned up in an auction.

They've never been published before and are seen here

for the first time.

What they show shines a new light on Scott.

He took to his tutelage very well.

He learned from a master.

Here's an early photograph.

You can see see that there was a certain problem.

-Head cut off.

-That's right.

All of a sudden we start seeing

Scott do different things from Ponting, and what happens is

that while Ponting is using the film camera, a whiteout occurs,

and Scott keeps taking the photographs.

Scott wanted to show action as it was occurring.

Having practised his craft at the hut, once on the expedition

to the pole it was Scott's chance to capture truly unique images.

Here we are on the great ice barrier, and there is the line of march.

With the infamous ponies.

With the infamous ponies, the sledges fully done

and the men trudging through a very heavy snow.

This photo is on the way to the South Pole.

-On the way.

-It's amazing.

They had to create these huge ice walls.

Imagine finishing a day's march like you had, and then having to build

a six-foot ice wall to protect the ponies from the freezing wind.

I heard a story of Oates who was particularly fond of the ponies, that these walls would sometimes

tumble in the night. The winds were so strong, they'd knock them over. He'd go and rebuild them.

And apparently he had one pony that kept knocking it down.

It got really angry, and he'd rebuilt it up to eight times in the night.

-That's right.

-That's dedication.

He was the last man in his tent because he was always building walls.

Captain Laurence Titus Oates loved the ponies

and understood them better than anyone on the expedition.

He's shown here to be one of Scott's most committed expedition members.

But Scott's pictures also give insight to his much debated leadership style.

Take a look at that.

They are manhauling for all their worth a sledge which weighs an awful lot.

So much has been made of Scott the divisionist,

if that's a word that I can use, but Captain Scott

who divided officers and men,

and they had their separate parts in the hut and even divided the loos,

and yet here it feels much more of a team, it feels much more intimate.

I'd agree with that.

I think all of these pictures show that everyone is moving together,

working together, to meet their goal.

I don't see any sense of division here at all.

The pictures show Scott's men working together.

It may be that the hut was divided, but for me

what these pictures reveal is a leader of a unified team

pulling as one, with a common goal.

Seven weeks after the party had left the hut,

the first news of the expedition began to arrive back at Cape Evans.

The motorised sledging team returned with the news that just 60 miles in, the vehicles had failed.

They'd been forced to abandon them.

But worse still, the dog sledding team returned from this point

with the news that Scott and his men had been stormbound for many days. This had a knock-on effect.

The ponies that they were relying on simply weren't going to make it up the glacier. They had to shoot them.

Scott and his men, without ponies, without dogs and without motorised

vehicles, would have to pull the sledges themselves.

They'd be manhauling the heavy sledges to the South Pole earlier than Scott had planned.

Those men left at the hut knew that Scott had to return by March

when the winter darkness would begin again and his rations would run out.

Until then, all they could do was wait.

By the middle of March, everyone in the hut knew that Scott's party should be returning.

Men became agitated and there were frequent false alarms.

Wind Vane Hill, right behind the hut,

is a perfectly positioned vantage point,

allowing a view directly south.

So they say that...

each evening a watchman would come up on top of this hill

and look due south for any sign of Scott's returning team.

When they went back into the hut there was complete silence,

everyone stopped what they were doing

in expectation of news.

25th March, 1912.

We have begun to worry about the fate of the polar party.

No one says anything, but you can see it in most of their faces.

When the watchman comes down from Vane Hill each night to report,

everything comes to a standstill in the hut

and every eye is fixed on him.

11th April, 1912.

I was standing outside the hut taking the temperatures when I heard someone shout, "The polar party's coming!"

I rushed into the hut, to the gramophone to get out the National Anthem to greet Scott.

I stood and waited long.

But no-one came.

19th April, 1912.

I had a fright today.

The stove was spluttering, the chimney pipe glowing red hot

right up to the roof, and outside a blizzard was blowing.

Suddenly, there was a bang at the door.

I stopped daydreaming and sat up and listened.

A wild idea rushed through my head.

Could the impossible have happened?

Could Scott have returned?

I rushed out of the hut into the blizzard.

Something loomed up and I ran towards it.

A big emperor penguin was paying us a visit.

It paid for its cheek

with its life.

By late October, exactly a year after Scott set out for the pole with ten men,

several of those same men now head off from the Cape Evans hut to attempt to find Scott's body.

Had the party failed, we would never have known how the story ended.

But by a chance in 100,

they find a tent almost buried after a winter in the snow.

It was here, 11 miles short of that final depot of food and fuel,

the depot that was originally supposed to be 30 miles further out.

Here inside the tent, Scott, the scientist and writer,

Wilson, and the great organiser Bowers...

..were found frozen.

They take Scott's diary, some exposed film that will later reveal

the faces of five men at the South Pole, one month after Amundsen.

This is the final diary that was on his body

when he was found in the tent.

This has lasted a whole winter out on the ice.

And here on this last page, "For God's sake,

"look after our people."

This was the only evidence as to how and why they perished.

The diary reveals that the mighty Evans was first to die.

We stopped, and seeing Evans a long way astern, we were alarmed, and all four started back on ski.

He was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered

and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes.

He died quietly at 12:30am.

He dies here at the foot of the Beardmore glacier on 16th February.

And just a month later, on 15th or 16th March,

Oates dies here, his feet in tatters from frostbite.

Poor Titus Oates said he couldn't go on.

He proposed we should leave him in his sleeping bag.

That we could not do.

He struggled on and we made a few miles.

He slept through the night, hoping not to wake, but he woke in the morning.

It was blowing a blizzard. He said...

"..I am just going outside and may be some time."

He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.

Perhaps the five men died because they were caught in some truly terrible polar storms.

Perhaps it was because they chose to take ponies

when dogs might have proved faster.

Or maybe they grew weak on low rations of food.

But there is another suggestion hinted at by Scott himself, that the fuel that was essential for heating

food and giving warmth ran out, something that mystified Scott,

but thanks to objects left behind, we may now have the answer.

This was a critical part of the story of Scott's last expedition.

One-gallon tins of paraffin.

They were sealed with these brass tops, and on the inside of them,

they had leather washers and they shrunk in the cold.

They'd arrive at one of their depots and they'd find these half empty.

That's right, and they couldn't understand why there was less fuel, and without that you're a goner.

There's been a lots of hypotheses, lots of theories

about why Scott might have died, what might have saved him.

But essentially, that little washer, that little piece of leather

could have meant the difference between life and death, really.

For something so small, it had a major bearing on the outcome.

In his last days, Scott assessed the reasons for what could now only end in tragedy.

Causes of the disaster are not due to faulty organisation, but to misfortune...

The loss of pony transport obliged the limits of stuff transported to be narrowed...

The weather throughout the outward journey...

We should have got through in spite of the weather...

But for the sickening of Captain Oates... Captain Oates...

And a shortage of fuel in our depots, for which I cannot account...

Finally, but for the storm which has fallen on us

within 11 miles of the depot...

Had we lived,

I should have had a tale to tell

of the hardyhood, endurance and courage of my companions

which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.

These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.

It seems a pity,

but I do not think that I can write more.

For God's sake,

look after our people.

Somewhere beneath this ice shelf that's the size of France

are the bodies

of Evans, Oates,

Wilson, Bowers

and Captain Scott,

entombed in 100 years of snow and ice.

And almost in a beautiful irony,

as this ice shelf continues to move north...

..at some stage, their bodies will arrive at open water

and they will have completed their journey home.

I set out to the Antarctic with contrasting portraits of Scott in my mind.

On one hand he was the great British hero who never put a foot wrong.

On the other he was an uncommunicative failure.

As my time at Cape Evans runs out,

I realise that I've been surrounded by the answers the whole time.

Shackleton's hut was the hut of a man whose principle aim,

like Amundsen's, was to get to the South Pole.

But I now realise why Scott's hut feels so different.

This wasn't just the base for a polar hunt, it was so much more.

This was the base for a journey of scientific discovery.

This is where the science of climate study began in Antarctica.

And this is where information was gained that was so accurate that's it's still used today.

Scott was turned into a two-dimensional hero by people

who didn't fully understand what he came here to do.

By spending time here in the hut,

I can see that he was so much more than that.

This is the Royal Geographical Society in London, the place where Scott researched his adventures.

A century on and I've been asked to present my own conclusions.

Over the last century, Scott has been portrayed as a national hero

and a heroic failure.

I think both do him an injustice.

I think as we mark the centenary of his great expedition,

it's time to allow him to be a man -

a man of vision, a man of drive,

a man of passion, a man with faults

and a man with qualities that made other men want to follow him

to the end of the Earth.

APPLAUSE

I feel that in a wooden hut in the Antarctic,

I came about as close to Scott as is ever going to be possible.

I think Scott was a man of passion and drive

who wanted to be remembered.

I think he might be amused and perhaps a little humbled

to know that, a century on, his hut is cherished

along with the toothbrushes, test tubes, boots,

cufflinks and bottles of tomato ketchup,

and that it bears witness to the kind of man he was.

I don't think he'd be displeased by that at all.

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