Roland Huntford ( Horowitz; 4 September 1927 – 23 January 2026) was a British author, principally of biographies of Polar explorers.
Background and education
Huntford was born on 4 September 1927, in Cape Town. Huntford, the son of Lithuanian parents (originally "Horowitz") living in South Africa, has stated that he was educated at the University of Cape Town and Imperial College London.
He wrote biographies of Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen; these biographies have been the subject of controversy.
His other books include Sea of Darkness (, ), The Sayings of Henrik Ibsen () and Two Planks and a Passion: The dramatic history of skiing (). His polemical The New Totalitarians (, ) is a critique of socialism in Sweden, written from the point of view of western political culture. His main thesis was that the Swedish social democratic party, like the "new totalitarians" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, relied less upon the violence and intimidation of the old totalitarians than upon sly persuasion and soft manipulation in order to achieve its goals.
Huntford was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 2001.
Death
Huntford died after a brief illness in Cambridge, England, on 23 January 2026, at the age of 98.
Works
- A Cultural History of Snow
- The Last Place on Earth
- The New Totalitarians
- The Shackleton Voyages