Lennard Bickel – författare

When Ernest Shackleton resolved to cross Antarctica in 1915, he knew the task would require two parties of men. Shackleton and his crew aimed to cross the continent - but were to meet with disaster when their ship, the Endurance, was frozen into the ice of the Weddell Sea. Meanwhile a smaller group - the Ross Sea party, led by the impetuous one-eyed captain Aeneas Mackintosh and the hard-headed Ernest Joyce - went before them and landed on the opposite side of the continent. Their mission was to haul sledges almost 2,000 miles across the harsh interior in order to set up a lifeline of depots for the coming Shackleton party. However, like the men of the Endurance, this group also lost their ship, the Aurora - along with their supplies - when a ferocious polar gale ripped it from its moorings. But Mackintosh and his men, who knew that their failure would doom Shackleton's party to starvation, refused to give up. They scavenged supplies from an earlier expedition, led by Robert Scott, and set out on one of the most remarkable journeys in polar history. Battling against deadly weather, with scant food and makeshift clothes, the small band hauled tons of supplies across the bitter polar wastes. Scurvy and madness overtook several men and, in the end, three of the party died - but not before they had accomplished their task. This is the story of ordinary men who rose to extraordinary heights of courage, determination and endurance. While their achievement was futile - Shackleton never came - it was also one of the greatest and most astonishing in the heroic age of polar exploration.

First published in 1988, Triumph over Darkness is a stirring story of determination and tenacity in the face of adversity. Born in France in 1809, Louis Braille was the 4th child of a village saddler. At the age of three he stabbed himself in the eye with a pointed tool taken from his father’s work bench. Some 13 years later he again took a sharp tool from the same bench and used it to create a code of raised dots punched through sheets of paper. With the patience of genius, he perfected his code- still unsurpassed-and fashioned an alphabet that opened the world of learning to the blind.Louis Braille died at the age of 43 unknown and unhonoured. He superiors at the Royal Institute for the Young Blind in Paris would not recognise the system that was not based on the shapes of the alphabet. Lennard Bickel researched this story in Paris and in the small village where Louis Braille was born. He tells of the trials and torments of a young blind man struggling amid the harshest conditions to perfect something he believed in. This book will be of interest to general readers interested in the life of Louis Braille.

Born in France in 1809, Louis Braille was the fourth child of a village saddler. At the age of three, he stabbed himself in the eye with a pointed tool taken from his father''s work bench.Some thirteen years later he again took a sharp tool from the same bench and used it to create a code of raised dots punched through sheets of paper. With the patience of genius, he perfected his code – still unsurpassed – and fashioned an alphabet that opened the world of learning to the blind.Louis Braille died at the age of forty-three, unknown and unhonoured. His superiors at the Royal Institute for the Young Blind in Paris would not recognise a system that was not based on the shapes of the alphabet.Lennard Bickel researched this story in Paris and in the small village where Louis Braille was born. He tells of the trials and torments of young blind man struggling amid the harshest conditions to perfect something he believed in.Triumph Over Darkness, first published in 1988, is a stirring story of determination and tenacity in the face of adversity.

It wouldn't be for years after that fateful day when Alexander Fleming sneezed on a petri dish and stumbled upon Penicillin, that the almost miraculous power of this mould would transform the lives of every person on the planet. In Florey, The Man Who Made Penicillin we follow the life of Howard Walter Florey, who worked tirelessly for years with his dedicated team at Oxford to realise the potential of not only penicillin, but also the huge breadth of 'tailor made' antibiotics.Born in Australia, Florey left Adelaide for Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship after graduating in medicine, seeking a career in medical science. In a time when an infection from a thorn scratch could lead to a long and painful death, and meningitis, rheumatic fever, venereal disease and other bacterial infections had meant certain doom, the idea of an antibiotic that could treat all of these afflictions was almost unimaginable. In the aftermath of WW1, when septicaemia and gas gangrene had claimed the lives of so many young men, the need for antibiotics had never been keener. First published in 1972, Florey, the Man Who Made Penicillin tracks Florey's battle with funding, the many set-backs and limitations of his equipment and public opinion, and the fascinating journey that led humankind to Penicillin. Whist Fleming got the lion's share of the credit, it was Florey who truly gave the world Penicillin.