The author, an artist, spent the year 1953 working as a Meteorologist for the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey at Base G, Admiralty Bay, in the South Shetland Islands. The following year he moved further south to Base F on the Argentine Islands. This book is based on his experience during those two winters. In his own words;-

"Is this book fact or fiction? In it are neither heroes nor epic journeys: it contains no reference to scientific work, no photographs, no places you can find on any map. It is, nevertheless, a book about the Antarctic as I saw it."