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Roland Huntford ( Horowitz;Race To The Pole: Tragedy, Heroism, and Scott's Antarctic Quest, Ranulph Fiennes, Hyperion, 2004, p. 387 4 September 1927 – 23 January 2026) was a British author, principally of biographies of Polar explorers.
He wrote biographies of Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Nobel Peace Prize winner Fridtjof Nansen; these biographies have been the subject of controversy.
Huntford put forth the point of view that Roald Amundsen's success in reaching the South Pole was abetted by much superior planning, whereas errors by Scott (notably including the reliance on horses instead of sled dogs) ultimately resulted in the death of Scott and his companions.Huntford, Roland (1985). The Last Place on Earth. London and Sydney: Pan Books. .
His other books include Sea of Darkness (, ), The Sayings of Henrik Ibsen () and Two Planks and a Passion: The dramatic history of skiing (). His polemical The New Totalitarians (, ) is a critique of socialism in Sweden, written from the point of view of western political culture. His main thesis was that the Swedish social democratic party, like the "new totalitarians" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, relied less upon the violence and intimidation of the old totalitarians than upon sly persuasion and soft manipulation in order to achieve its goals.
Huntford was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2001.
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