Describes the author's time working as a basecamp doctor at Antarctica's Halley research station and his fascination with the emperor penguin community that shared the icy continent with him.

Francis fulfilled a lifetime's ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. It was a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and a very little human history, but also a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Francis explores the world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of living at 50c below zero and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community bring.