Captain Robert Scott’s last diary entry, as he lay freezing and starving to death on an ill-fated South Pole journey, concludes: “for God’s sake look after our people”. Uppermost were the three women who would now be widows: his wife Kathleen, Oriana Wilson, and Lois Evans — the Welsh working-class wife of a Petty Officer.
The men became heroes, but these three very different women — two of whom travelled with the expedition to New Zealand — were forced to grieve in public. Yet they are now forgotten. In her book Widows of the Ice, historian and author Anne Fletcher tells their story.
Fletcher's career in heritage has seen her work at historic sites ranging from Hampton Court Palace to Westminster Abbey.
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