I May Be Some Time

PRE-ORDER NONESUCH, FRANCIS SPUFFORD'S NEW NOVEL, NOW





'A truly majestic work of scholarship, thought and literary imagination.' Jan Morris, The Times

'Shot through with crystalline brilliance.' Washington Post

'Fascinating.' Sunday Times





When Captain Scott died in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole, his story became a myth embedded in the national imagination. Everyone remembers the doomed Captain Oates's last words: 'I'm just going outside, and I may be some time.' Francis Spufford's celebrated and prize-winning history shows how Scott's death was the culmination of a national enchantment with vast empty spaces, the beauty of untrodden snow, and perilous journeys to the end of the earth.



Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the Banff Mountain Book Prize.



Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, has written five works of non-fiction and three novels. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.