Abstract

Born Adventurer is the first biography of one of the most fascinating explorers of the Heroic Age of British and Commonwealth Antarctic exploration. Born into an affluent middle-class family, Bickerton decided to reject his comfortable surroundings and to embark, instead, upon an astonishingly colourful career during which he not only carried the first aeroplane to Antarctica but also hunted for pirate gold on Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island", served as a frontline trenches officer and a member of one of the RFC's elite squadrons during the First World War, travelled from Cape to Cairo during the golden age of the African safari and finally worked as a screenwriter and editor at Shepperton Studios.