Books by Max Jones
The vividness, drama, and poignancy of Scott's Journals are as powerful today as they were when t... more The vividness, drama, and poignancy of Scott's Journals are as powerful today as they were when they were first published in 1913, when the world learnt the news of the expedition's tragic end. This edition reprints the 1913 text, including many of the original photographs and drawings, as well as incorporating the wealth of scholarship on polar exploration which has appeared since 1913.
First publication of all the passages deleted from Scott's original text. First account of the publishing history of one of the iconic texts of the twentieth century, drawing on papers in the John Murray archive which have never been consulted before. The first fully annotated edition, which for the first time give due weight to the scientific aims of the expedition. Appendixes include J. M. Barrie's 'Biographical Introduction' and 'The Finding of the Dead'. Also included is a glossary of names and a full index.
Edited by Max Jones, author of The Last Great Quest, whose introduction outlines the history of the expedition, the circumstances surrounding publication of the Journals, Scott's changing reputation over the last century, and the continued attraction of heroes in our cynical age.
Scott's last Antarctic expedition is one of the great adventure stories of the twentieth century.... more Scott's last Antarctic expedition is one of the great adventure stories of the twentieth century. On 1 November 1911, a British team set out on the gruelling 800-mile journey across the coldest and highest continent on Earth to travel to the South Pole. Five men battled through unimaginably harsh conditions only to find the Norwegian flag had been planted at the Pole just weeks before. Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Lieutenant Henry Bowers, Petty Officer Edgar Evans, Captain Lawrence Oates, and Dr Edward Wilson all died on the return trek, starved and frozen to death, only eleven miles from a supply camp. In November 1912, a rescue party discovered their last letters and diaries, which told a story of bravery, hardship, and self-sacrifice that shocked the world.
Recent decades have seen controversy rage over whether Scott was the last of a line of great Victorian explorers, intent on discovering uncharted lands, or a hopeless incompetent driven by personal ambition. Rejecting the stereotypes, Max Jones reveals a complex figure, a product of the passions and preoccupations of an imperial age. He also shows how heroes are made and manipulated, through a close examination of the unprecedented outpouring of public grief at the news of the death of Scott and his companions.
Max Jones uses fascinating new evidence and previously unseen illustrations to take us back to this remarkable moment in modern history, and tells for the first time the full story of The Last Great Quest.
Journal Articles by Max Jones
Journal of Modern History, 2021
The article examines why the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen’s Arctic expedition on board Fram (1893–96... more The article examines why the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen’s Arctic expedition on board Fram (1893–96) generated so much attention across Europe and America. The article analyzes previously unused manuscripts, geographical society journals, and print culture to show how Fram’s story traveled through three related networks: as a set of commercial products circulated through an expanding global market for commodities and media spectacle; as a set of scientific products circulated through an increasingly institutionalized network of universities, learned societies, and international congresses; and as a set of symbolic goods projected to the public through state networks via ceremonies and monuments. Section I outlines the origins of the expedition in the campaign for Norwegian independence, before Section II analyzes how geographical societies showered Nansen with awards. Speakers expressed a transnational discourse of heroic exploration and celebrated a scientific quest in the service of humanity, but ceremonies consistently positioned Nansen’s achievement to honor individual nation-states. Sections III and IV reconstruct the commodification of the expedition, revealing for the first time the full scale of Nansen’s lecture tours. Expeditions were engines of novelty, manufacturing new visions of heroic masculinity for sale in a global marketplace. Section V shows how publications across Europe and America deployed similar textual and visual strategies to project Nansen, his wife Eva, and daughter Liv through the optic of celebrity, manufacturing emotional bonds with audiences. By charting the circulation of products through entangled commercial, scientific, and state networks, the article explains the global reach of Fram’s story.
Twentieth Century British History Advance Acccess 2014. This article presents the first detailed ... more Twentieth Century British History Advance Acccess 2014. This article presents the first detailed study of General Gordon’s remembrance in Britain between 1918 and 1972. Previous scholars have exaggerated the impact of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918). Strachey damaged Gordon’s reputation, but part one reveals how several commentators forcefully rebutted Eminent Victorians; official commemorations, books, radio plays, and films celebrated Gordon in the 1930s, as empire featured prominently in mass culture. Didactic uses of his example by the state diminished after 1945, but parts 2 and 3 show how writers used Gordon’s story to engage with new debates about Britain’s role in the world, immigration and sexuality. The article reveals how a fascination with the sexuality of heroes inspired men as diverse as Viscount Robin Maugham and East End gangster Ronnie Kray to identify with Gordon. Maugham’s works and the feature film Khartoum (1966) expressed nostalgia for empire during decolonization, but American screenwriter Robert Ardrey also drew on his experiences in the Congo to present a dark vision of African savagery in Khartoum, a vision performed at Pinewood studios by black immigrants from London’s slums. The article questions Edward Berenson’s emphasis on the ‘charismatic aura’ of heroes, emphasizing instead the diversity of engagements inspired through different genre.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014 . The heroes of the Br... more The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014 . The heroes of the British and French empires stood at the vanguard of the vibrant cultures of imperialism that emerged in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet imperial heroes did not disappear after 1945 as British and French flags were lowered around the world. On the contrary, their reputations underwent a variety of metamorphoses in both the former metropoles and the former colonies. The introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History presents an overview of the changing history and historiography of imperial heroes half a century after the end of empire.
The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014. This article analyses... more The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014. This article analyses a major television series on the race to the South Pole, The Last Place on Earth (1985), an adaptation of Roland Huntford's classic debunking biography Scott and Amundsen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979). Both the Thatcherite Huntford's book and Marxist Trevor Griffiths' screenplay condemned Captain Scott. The article reveals how the debunking of imperial heroes collided with debates about decline in 1980s Britain: the failings of an individual embodied the failings of the nation, configured through references to gender and sexuality. The article also emphasises the appeal of interpretations of the making of an imperial hero based on conspiracy and censorship.
Polar Journal, Nov 2011
This article sets out a new chronology and analysis of changing representations of Scott of the A... more This article sets out a new chronology and analysis of changing representations of Scott of the Antarctic since the Second World War, which challenges Stephanie Barczewski’s recent account. Section one distinguishes between three developments in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s: first, comedians began to mock Scott and the heroic culture of stoic sacrifice which he exemplified; secondly, a few writers built on these developments to present a political critique of Edwardian culture and society; and, thirdly, biographers modernized Scott’s image by exploring his psychology. Section two reassesses the significance of Roland Huntford’s intervention in Scott and Amundsen in 1979. When studying heroes, the article argues, scholars should distinguish clearly between reputation, newsworthiness and public interest. Huntford made a decisive contribution to the fracturing of Scott’s reputation, a process well under way by 1979, but the controversy surrounding his book also kept Scott in the public eye. Finally, section three argues that, while several recent works have presented more sympathetic portraits, Scott’s fractured reputation will remain contested. The article concludes that the principal change in representations of Scott has been the disappearance of explicitly didactic texts aimed at children and the rise of more irreverent portrayals.
History Compass, Mar 2007
This article reviews research on modern British heroes (in particular Henry Havelock, Florence Ni... more This article reviews research on modern British heroes (in particular Henry Havelock, Florence Nightingale,Amy Johnson and Robert Falcon Scott) to argue that heroes should be analysed as sites within which we can find evidence of the cultural beliefs, social practices, political structures and economic systems of the past. Much early work interpreted modern heroes as instruments of nationalist and imperialist ideologies, but instrumental interpretations have been superseded within the New Cultural History by broader analyses of the range of gendered meanings encoded in heroic reputations. Studies of heroic icons have generated important insights for historians of masculinity and femininity. More research, however, is needed on the reception rather than the representation of heroic icons, on visual and material sources, and on the changing forms and functions of national heroes after 1945.
Book Reviews by Max Jones
Polar Record, 2006
Since the publication of his Scott and Amundsen in 1979, Roland Huntford's critical asse... more Since the publication of his Scott and Amundsen in 1979, Roland Huntford's critical assessment of Captain Scott has steadily gained ground as the accepted interpretation of Britain's most famous polar explorer. No less a literary luminary than Paul Theroux ...
Polar Record, 2005
It takes some effort today to remember that, less than a decade ago, the exploits of Ernest Shack... more It takes some effort today to remember that, less than a decade ago, the exploits of Ernest Shackleton were largely forgotten in Britain and America. Roland Huntford's 1985 Shackleton was almost the only new book on the polar explorer published between the Fishers' 1957 biography ...
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2007
260 REVIEWS OF BOOKS the foundation for communist interpretations of the Ten Thousand in the 20th... more 260 REVIEWS OF BOOKS the foundation for communist interpretations of the Ten Thousand in the 20th century. Many 19th-century commentators such as Grote and Benjamin Haydon presented the British defeat of Napoleonic France as a re-staging of the Greek victory over ...
Papers by Max Jones
Acme Annali Della Facolta Di Lettere E Filosofia Dell Universita Degli Studi Di Milano, 2012
In M J Daunton Editor the Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain British Academy Centenary Monographs Oxford University Press 2005 P 313 336, 2005
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Books by Max Jones
First publication of all the passages deleted from Scott's original text. First account of the publishing history of one of the iconic texts of the twentieth century, drawing on papers in the John Murray archive which have never been consulted before. The first fully annotated edition, which for the first time give due weight to the scientific aims of the expedition. Appendixes include J. M. Barrie's 'Biographical Introduction' and 'The Finding of the Dead'. Also included is a glossary of names and a full index.
Edited by Max Jones, author of The Last Great Quest, whose introduction outlines the history of the expedition, the circumstances surrounding publication of the Journals, Scott's changing reputation over the last century, and the continued attraction of heroes in our cynical age.
Recent decades have seen controversy rage over whether Scott was the last of a line of great Victorian explorers, intent on discovering uncharted lands, or a hopeless incompetent driven by personal ambition. Rejecting the stereotypes, Max Jones reveals a complex figure, a product of the passions and preoccupations of an imperial age. He also shows how heroes are made and manipulated, through a close examination of the unprecedented outpouring of public grief at the news of the death of Scott and his companions.
Max Jones uses fascinating new evidence and previously unseen illustrations to take us back to this remarkable moment in modern history, and tells for the first time the full story of The Last Great Quest.
Journal Articles by Max Jones
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014 . The heroes of the British and French empires stood at the vanguard of the vibrant cultures of imperialism that emerged in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet imperial heroes did not disappear after 1945 as British and French flags were lowered around the world. On the contrary, their reputations underwent a variety of metamorphoses in both the former metropoles and the former colonies. The introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History presents an overview of the changing history and historiography of imperial heroes half a century after the end of empire.
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014. This article analyses a major television series on the race to the South Pole, The Last Place on Earth (1985), an adaptation of Roland Huntford's classic debunking biography Scott and Amundsen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979). Both the Thatcherite Huntford's book and Marxist Trevor Griffiths' screenplay condemned Captain Scott. The article reveals how the debunking of imperial heroes collided with debates about decline in 1980s Britain: the failings of an individual embodied the failings of the nation, configured through references to gender and sexuality. The article also emphasises the appeal of interpretations of the making of an imperial hero based on conspiracy and censorship.
Book Reviews by Max Jones
Papers by Max Jones
First publication of all the passages deleted from Scott's original text. First account of the publishing history of one of the iconic texts of the twentieth century, drawing on papers in the John Murray archive which have never been consulted before. The first fully annotated edition, which for the first time give due weight to the scientific aims of the expedition. Appendixes include J. M. Barrie's 'Biographical Introduction' and 'The Finding of the Dead'. Also included is a glossary of names and a full index.
Edited by Max Jones, author of The Last Great Quest, whose introduction outlines the history of the expedition, the circumstances surrounding publication of the Journals, Scott's changing reputation over the last century, and the continued attraction of heroes in our cynical age.
Recent decades have seen controversy rage over whether Scott was the last of a line of great Victorian explorers, intent on discovering uncharted lands, or a hopeless incompetent driven by personal ambition. Rejecting the stereotypes, Max Jones reveals a complex figure, a product of the passions and preoccupations of an imperial age. He also shows how heroes are made and manipulated, through a close examination of the unprecedented outpouring of public grief at the news of the death of Scott and his companions.
Max Jones uses fascinating new evidence and previously unseen illustrations to take us back to this remarkable moment in modern history, and tells for the first time the full story of The Last Great Quest.
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014 . The heroes of the British and French empires stood at the vanguard of the vibrant cultures of imperialism that emerged in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet imperial heroes did not disappear after 1945 as British and French flags were lowered around the world. On the contrary, their reputations underwent a variety of metamorphoses in both the former metropoles and the former colonies. The introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History presents an overview of the changing history and historiography of imperial heroes half a century after the end of empire.
Volume 42, Issue 5, 2014. This article analyses a major television series on the race to the South Pole, The Last Place on Earth (1985), an adaptation of Roland Huntford's classic debunking biography Scott and Amundsen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1979). Both the Thatcherite Huntford's book and Marxist Trevor Griffiths' screenplay condemned Captain Scott. The article reveals how the debunking of imperial heroes collided with debates about decline in 1980s Britain: the failings of an individual embodied the failings of the nation, configured through references to gender and sexuality. The article also emphasises the appeal of interpretations of the making of an imperial hero based on conspiracy and censorship.