SURVIVAL: SOUTH ATLANTIC

 Cindy Buxton and Annie Price, Foreword by David Attenborough, Granada 1983.

 This handsomely illustrated book is both a magnificent portrait of the wildlife of a remote part of the world and an extraordinary adventure story.

In March 1982 the wildlife film maker Cindy Buxton and her assistant Annie Price were coming to the end of seven months filming on the South Atlantic Island of South Georgia when they were caught up in an all-too-real drama: the Argentinians involved and the young women spent four nerve-racking weeks trapped in their tiny hut before being rescued by HMS Endurance.

This is the remarkable story of that time and of two previous seasons filming in the Falklands, including three months on an uninhabited island. The authors describe the wildlife they photographed for the Anglia Television ‘Survival’ series: the enormous colonies of elephant seals, of various species of penguin, of albatross and upland geese.

They are frank about the harsh conditions of life in a region of frequent storms, but pay tribute to the warmth and kindness of the islanders even when contact is almost entirely by radio.

Apart from some light creasing and a shelf-scar, mainly to the rear of the dust jacket, and a minor split at the top front tip of the same, the book is in good condition, clean and tightly bound. It has some stunning colour photography.