It took a certain kind of person to be a polar explorer. Whether they were fantastically brave or merely awash with "homicidal lunacy" (as a Guardian reviewer once put it) probably depended on whether you were a flag-waving patriot safely at home or a frostbitten sailor surviving on a diet of frozen seal meat and lead-laced drinking water.
Here are five of the finest books you will find on the subject, best enjoyed from under the comfort of a warm duvet.IN THE KINGDOM OF ICE by Hampton Sides
The story of the 1879-1881 Arctic voyage of the USS Jeannette is one of the most bitter tales of all. Veteran explorer George De Long hoped to open a route from the Pacific Ocean to the North Pole by voyaging on the temperate Kuroshio current which, a theory of the time went, would open the way to the North Pole.
Instead, the Jeannette was trapped in ice in September 1879 and she and her hapless crew of 33 souls drifted for two years until the ship finally sank in 1881.
The men set off on dog sleds, towing the ship's boats, and tried to reach the Siberian mainland. Only 13 ever returned home. De Long was not among them.ENDURANCE by Alfred Lansing
Ernest Shackleton is one of the few explorers lionised for not exploring.
His Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition failed even to reach land after the ship, Endurance, became trapped by ice in the Weddell Sea.
Like De Long's crew on the Jeanette 35 years before, the men lived aboard for the winter of 1915, expecting that the onset of the thaw would free them.
It was not to be: crushed by the encircling ice, Endurance finally sank, leaving her crew and dogs to fend for themselves on the ice.
They dragged the ship's boats to open water and sailed for Elephant Island, where they established another camp.
Realising that they would not survive another winter, Shackleton and five men set off in an open lifeboat on a 1,300km journey to remote but inhabited South Georgia Island.MRS CHIPPY'S LAST EXPEDITIONby Caroline Alexander
The journal of the ship's cat on the Shackleton expedition offers a lighter account of these otherwise perilous quests for glory.
Mrs Chippy (she was, in fact, a he) belonged to the ship's carpenter Harry McNish - hence "Chippy".
The tabby is an acerbic diarist, with acute observations about his shipmates, the uncouth sled dogs he torments and his excellent abilities as a sailor.
Anyone owned by a cat will recognise the superior tone and lofty point of view.NINETY DEGREES NORTH by Fergus Fleming
Fleming's investigation of the big North Pole expeditions from 1845 to 1969 reads like a manual of unhinged folly as explorers set off on skis, dog sleds, ships, airships and their feet to conquer the frozen north.The account deftly unpacks the lunacy, ego and national pride, leavened with a genuine thirst for knowledge that drove most of these men.
None of them set out to eat their shipmates but, in the end, more than a few probably did.THE CRUELEST MILES by Gay Salisbury and Laney SalisburyIn the winter of 1925, a diphtheria epidemic hit the icebound port of Nome, Alaska.
Out of reach by ships and battered by storms preventing relief by air, the task of carrying fresh antitoxin to the Nome fell upon 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs, who set off into a fresh blizzard and took six days to cover the 1,000km.
Balto, a husky, emerged as the hero dog. He is now immortalised by a statue in Central Park, New York - which, on the US mainland, is pretty much as far from Nome as it is possible to get. Warmer too...