Sailing his newly-created yacht Mingming II, Roger ventures into the Baring Sea and explores the islands of north-eastern Svalbard. During the 55-day voyage to waters seldom sailed in, he encounters everything from walruses to inquisitive humpback whales to massive ice cliffs, and nearly rescues a beautiful Russian girl from Bear Island. On his way back he makes his third visit to the island of Jan Mayen, deep in the Norwegian Sea, and there fulfils a long-held ambition. Acutely observational and well-laced with Taylor's wry humour, the book is as much an exploration of what is possible with...

'However many times it has been done, the act of casting off the warps and letting go one's last hold of the shore at the start of a voyage has about it something solemn and irrevocable, like marriage, for better or for worse.' Mostly Mischief's ordinary title belies four more extraordinary voyages made by H.W. 'Bill' Tilman covering almost 25,000 miles in both Arctic and Antarctic waters. The first sees the pilot cutter Mischief retracing the steps of Elizabethan explorer John Davis to the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage. Tilman and a companion land on the north coast and make the...