On Sunday 28 November it will have been 25 years since Air NZ flight TE901 crashed into Mt Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.

Commemorations are being held throughout the country, including one in Antarctica, with Minister of Foreign Affairs, Phil Goff, and Sir Edmund Hillary. Bill Manhire has written a poem for Sir Edmund to read at Scott Base, although Bill will be on National Radio reading it himself at 1.30 on the 28th.

‘It’s hard to write about such an event without making all the wrong tonal gestures, and somehow insulting the dead and bereaved all over again,” he said. But time has gone by. I decided to give the mountain itself a voice, and then to let the dead make their answer,’ said Bill Manhire. He will also be discussing his recent book The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica.

Seems a good point to give a quick reminder - we have a date for Plumbly’s rare book auction which includes many on Antarctica. We wrote about it last month: it’s going ahead next Tuesday 30th November.