Book Review : Broken Journey

Georgina Hunter-Jones

Jennifer Murray writes about her aborted journey across the poles with Colin Bodill

This is a nicely written and thoroughly honest book by Jennifer Murray about her and Colin Bodill's helicopter crash in the Antarctic, while attempting to reach both poles on a single journey and thus fly round the world.

It starts with a prologue rather like a novel, which sets the scene for us. It describes exactly what all the involved parties were doing just before the accident, including her family, Colin Bodill's family, and the soon to be rescuers: pilots, air traffic controllers and all those closely involved with the story. Corporal O'Reilly, for example, in RAF, Kinloss, Scotland, was, "setting down to a routine watch, finalising paperwork... By 1am there was little to do other than keep an eye on the screen and check the satellite information which beamed earthward every half-hour."

Next, it moves to the preparation, which covers her first solo round the world flight, and Colin's flight as the first microlight pilot to fly round the world, and moves on to their difficulties, delights and sometimes sheer frustration trying to get a helicopter, sponsors and all the things necessary for their first attempt to reach both poles. Unfortunately she was unable to get either Bell...