Scott's Last Expedition - Natural History Museum, London
A couple of weekends ago I visited the Natural History Museum in London. I was with my brother, and we had hoped to catch the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. Unfortunately this was so popular that it was sold out, but it gave us a chance to see another temporary exhibition, Scott's Last Expedition.
It tells the fairly well known story of his ill-fated 2nd expedition to try and be the first to the South Pole. As you probably know that ended in failure as not only was Scott and his team beaten to the pole by Roald Amundsen, but tragically Scott and his 4 companions died on the return trip.
However there was a lot more to the whole story than just this. This exhibition goes into all the details of the preparation, how the whole idea of "conquering" the Antarctic had caught the imagination of England at the time, and how the scientific part of the expedition was planned and executed.
Obviously everyone recalls that Scott and his companions perished, but in other respects the expedition was very productive from a scientific point of view. The exhibition shows in much detail pictures, artefacts, and even cine film of the trip. Did you know that they took ponys to pull the sledges? Or that in 1913 they had early prototype (and unfortunately unreliable) motorized sledges?
The expedition cameraman, as well as taking many still photos, also took moving pictures with a large wooden hand-cranked cine camera.
If you get a chance to visit this exhibition before it closes in September I would definitely recommend it.
(amazingly, as I was typing this, I saw on TV that Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton is journeying to the South Pole as a Sport Relief challenge. How different things are 100 years on!)
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/scott-last-expedition/

