Under the Pole Star. The Oxford University Arctic Expedition, 1935-6.

1937. London, Methuen, [1937]. Large 8vo. Original blue cloth, lettered in gilt; pp. xv, 365; 48 tinted plates from superb, almost artistic photographs, 22 maps and diagrams including one folding and printed in colour at the end; spine a little faded, minimal toninng to endpapers; a very good presentation and asociation copy. First edition. Glen had participated in a 1933 expedition to Spitsbergen. The current work details a return to the Northeast Land region of Spitsbergen, made to undertaken meterological observations and to investigate the icecap. It contains interesting details concerning the establishment of the work station, and on the use of dogs in exploration. - Sir Alexander Glen has an intersting biography: after Arctic explorations he was involved in the Second World War in Spitsbergen and Yugoslavia, from where he accompanied Tito to an audience with Stalin, before he became involved in the travel business. Arctic Bibliography 5813. Provenance: Posthumous bookplate Brian Birley Roberts inside front cover, his signature and ms. note that he reviewed the book in the Geographical Journal underneath. Brian Burley Roberts, inspired as a child by reading Raymond Raife's The Quest for the Arctic Poppy, became a Polar ornithologist, researcher anf the father of the Antarctic Treaty. 'While an undergraduate, he organized and led the Cambridge University Expedition to Vatnajokull in Iceland in 1932 and the Cambridge University Expedition to Scoresby Sund in East Greenland in 1933. Roberts joined the British Graham Land Expedition, 1934-1937 (leader John Rymill), as an ornithologist, spending the austral winter of 1935 at the Argentine Islands and, after an operation to remove his appendix, the following winter on South Georgia where he studied Antarctic birds and elephant seals … In 1946, he joined the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, as a part-time research fellow' (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk). The author Sandy Glen had sent this copy to Roberts with a Christmas-themed card, inscribed and signed by him to Roberts. The card is mounted on front fly leaf. - A truly charming provenance.