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BODY AT THE MELBOURNE CLUB: BERTRAM ARMYTAGE, ANTARCTICA'S FORGOTTEN MAN. By DAVID BURKE. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2009. ISBN 978-1-86254-833-6. xv + 170 p., map, b&w illus., appendix, bib., index. Softbound. AU$27.95.
The story of Ernest Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition (BAE)-on which sledging parties made valiant attempts to reach the geographic South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole-has been told several times in recent years, with the emphasis varying between the entire expedition (Riffenburgh, 2004; Wilson, 2009) and the major participants, such as Professor T.W. Edgeworth David (Branagan, 2005) and Douglas Mawson (Riffenburgh, 2008). This book is a biography of Bertram Armytage, the expedition's third Australian (along with David and Mawson), but one who played a far less significant role than his countrymen, and, unlike them, failed to become a national hero. In fact, his story ended in tragedy the year after the expedition's return, when he committed suicide in his room at the elite Melbourne Club, an event that inspired the book's title.
My initial impression, even before opening the book, was that the choice of Armytage for a biography was a bit odd. Although the cover matter, the introduction, and at points the main text attempt to justify this selection, by the time I had finished the book, my opinion remained the same: that there was not enough interesting or significant about Armytage to warrant a full biography.
Born in 1869, the fourth son in one branch of a large Victoria family that had grown wealthy through the wool industry, Armytage led an early life not dissimilar to those of countless others of the British Empire's pampered social and economic elite. He loved riding, hunting, and shooting, and when he left Australia to attend the University of Cambridge, his shining moments proved to be not in academics but in rowing in...