Huw Jones: 5 books

It's Shoreditch, London, in the late 1950s, and Frank Pollock is fixer-in-chief for the Posties, a feared band of locals descended from paupers thrown out of the notorious Old Nichol slum at the turn of the last century. Ruthlessly led by their Director, they fought back to commandeer wharves and...

Imagining the Arctic explores the culture and politics of polar exploration and the making of its heroes. Leading explorers, the celebrity figures of their day, went to great lengths to convince their contemporaries of the merits of polar voyages. Much of exploration was in fact theatre: a series...

Rugby has held a central role in Welsh life over the past century. In the words of historian Gareth Williams, the game has been 'a pre-eminent expressionof Welsh consciousness, a signifier of Welsh nationhood'. Less than 25 years ago touring teams from the southern hemisphere knew that their hardest...

In 1911 the world was watching, waiting, hoping, attention focused on a desolate spot at the very end of the earth, as two men raced to conquer the South Pole. A hundred years after Roald Amundsen's triumph and Robert Scott's tragic demise, our fascination with the Antarctic remains as acute as ever....

A fascinating view of the personalities that make up the world of mountaineering, from world-famous explorers to native sherpas.