Wally Herbert
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Sir Wally Herbert (born 24 October 1934) is a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man to walk undisputed to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's famous, but disputed, expedition.
During the course of his polar career, which has spanned more than 50 years, he has spent 15 years in the wilderness regions of the polar world, and travelled with dog teams and open boats well over 25,000 miles - more than half of that distance through unexplored areas.
In the Antarctic in the late 1950s and early 60s he mapped over 46,000 square miles of new country. Since then he has sledged several thousands of miles with some of the finest long-range hunters of the world’s most northerly Inuit tribe; retraced the routes of some of the greatest explorers in history – Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen in the Antarctic; Peary, Sverdrup and Cook in the Arctic – and earned his own place in polar history with his epic 3,800-mile trek – the first surface crossing of the Arctic Ocean, which most historians now record as ‘the last great journey on Earth.’
That 16-months’ journey (in 1968-1969) from Alaska to Spitsbergen via the Pole of Inaccessibility and the North Pole was hailed by Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, as ‘a feat of endurance and courage which ranks with any in polar history’, and an achievement, in the opinion of H.R.H. Prince Philip, ‘which ranks among the greatest triumphs of human skill and endurance.’
In recognition of his polar achievements, he has received several honours and awards: among them the Polar Medal and bar; the Founders' Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the gold medals of several Geographical Societies, and the Explorers Medal of the Explorers Club. He has a mountain range and a plateau named after him in the Antarctic; the most northerly mountain in the Svalbard Group named after him in the Arctic.
He is also a prize-winning author and an artist, and has had one-man shows in London, New York and Sydney.
[edit] Bibliography
- The Polar World, Wally Herbert, scheduled for publication 2007
- The Noose of Laurels, Wally Herbert
- Polar Deserts, Wally Herbert
- Hunters of the Polar North, Wally Herbert
- Eskimos, Wally Herbert
- North Pole, Wally Herbert
- Across the Top of the World, Wally Herbert
- A World of Men, Wally Herbert
