White Eskimo

BOWN'S EXCELLENT BIOGRAPHY OF RASMUSSEN IS NOT JUST A BLACK AND WHITE ADVENTURE

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

It takes special people to visit the Poles, as my relatives would agree. We now have Bown's brilliant explanation and account of the exploits of a thoroughly rounded explorer who was much larger than life recounted in "White Eskimo". A book which can be added to our Polar and Inuit history library: the story of Knud Rasmussen.

The sheer breadth and challenge of the Arctic comes alive in this detailed, cultural and scholarly work which shows off Bown's biographical skills at their best with his patient researches. It will remain a book to treasure for those of us who can now only read of these cold wildernesses and the extraordinary adventurers who have visited the most difficult parts of the planet.

Rasmussen was a man many of us would have been most privileged to meet. And you can as well, a limited extent of course, by reading "White Eskimo" which brings the man alive again.

Bown pictures and evaluates the less than black and white career of an extraordinary journeyman: they still make some of them like Rasmussen in 21st century... but there are not nearly so many today of his calibre around, so the best we can make do with now is this little polar gem of a biography set in the heart of the floating Arctic.