FitzRoy: The Remarkable Story of Darwin's Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast »

John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin are visiting fellows at the University of Sussex. John Gribbin has long been interested in the weather and is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. Mary Gribbin has a special interest in exploration and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Together they have written many books on science topics.

The name of Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle, is forever linked with that of his most famous passenger, Charles Darwin. This exceptionally interesting biography brings FitzRoy out of Darwin’s shadow for the first time, revealing a man who experienced high adventure, suffered tragic disappointments, and—as the inventor of weather forecasting—saved the lives of countless fellow mariners.
John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin draw a detailed portrait of FitzRoy, recounting the wide range of his accomplishments and exploring the motivations that drove him. As a very young and successful commander in the British navy, FitzRoy’s life was in the mold of a Patrick O’Brian novel. Later disappointments, including an unpopular tenure as governor of New Zealand and a sense of dismay over his own contributions to Darwin’s ideas of evolution, troubled FitzRoy. Even his groundbreaking accomplishments in meteorological science failed to satisfy his high personal expectations, and in 1865 FitzRoy committed suicide at the age of sixty. This biography focuses well-deserved attention on FitzRoy’s status as a scientist and seaman, affirming that his was a life which, despite its sorrowful end, encompassed many more successes than failures.

The New York Times - Bruce Barcott

The Longest Winter adds a missing chapter to the history of polar exploration and may return some shine to Scott's reputation, which has suffered in the current vogue for his rival Ernest Shackleton. Lambert uses the mission of the Northern Party to argue that Scott was a devoted man of science, not a hapless pole-bagger. Her evidence is fairly convincing, but it will be difficult to overcome our image of Scott as the tragic hero who arrived at the pole after Roald Amundsen and perished on the return journey.