Colin Greenwood reviews Michael Palin's Erebus for The Spectator

Colin Greenwood has reviewed Michael Palin's Erebus: The Story of a Ship for The Spectator. Pitchfork says it appears to be his first piece of journalism, although in 2011 he wrote a playful review of the Guardian staff's cover of “Creep”.

The book tells of the Arctic voyage that ended in the Franklin disaster, and Greenwood likes the way Palin writes, with a wry enthusiasm, bolstered by his own experiences as an eminent explorer and film-maker¹.

Palin tried to reach the wreck of the Erebus, below King William Island, aboard a modern Russian ice-breaker, and was turned back by the ice. Greenwood puts that down to climate change.

Warming seas have caused Arctic ice shelves to break up, causing massive ice floes that ironically echo the conditions Franklin found himself in, now frozen in time.

Colin Greenwood¹