Béchervaise, John.

This book concerns the ANARE trip to Mawson in 1959. A somehwat odd book in that it is an epistolary account of a year at an Australian base by letters to a variety of friends and relatives, interspersed with a series of newsletters ostensibly for a public audience. He does tell some exciting stories as the base commander, but his references to reading are more utiitarian than inspirational, for example the use of The Australian Pilot to find repair facilities in various places (p. 24). A discussion of Plato and death is more speculative and a rarity for this book (p. 135). However, there are some quietly meditative passages that make the book valuable and are reproduced here even though unrelated to Antarctic reading.