Rennie Parker, "Daughters of the Last Campaign"

Rennie Parker is a poet and FE worker, living in Lincolnshire. She has published several collections with Shoestring Press, her latest one being Balloons and Stripey Trousers.

She grew up in Leeds, and worked in tourism before researching a PhD at Birmingham Uni. Since then, she has worked in community arts and museums, taught literature, published criticism as well as poetry, and takes part in regional bookfairs and events. 

About Daughters of the Last Campaign, by Rennie Parker
The race to the South Pole, 1909 – 1911. What if a female expedition had really gone ahead? Meet Lady Helena the obsessive leader, her not-too-bright companion Gloria … and a third expeditioneer from (no!) a lower social class. Meanwhile, a modern-day researcher attempts to make sense of it all, hindered by a bitter descendant and a raft of eccentric enthusiasts. There is, of course, a re-enactment society who are going to deliver a LARP weekend, and an unwilling research supervisor who dislikes his supervisee; not to mention Major "Blaze" Fender-Bowen, who takes time out from his next TV series to speak with our contemporary heroine. What a shame the photographs from 1910 are so bad; is it possible that the whole expedition was a gigantic hoax? Join the intrepid Elizabeth Winsome Gardiner as she hauls a sledge across the white continent, acting as diarist, scientist, cook, and navigator. 

You can read more about Daughters of the Last Campaign on the author's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Daughters of the Last Campaign
[Our 3-woman team is about to journey South. However, the paying-guest member, EWG, was recruited in a hurry thanks to a funding crisis.]

- Here you are. Compass, solar compass, chronometer, theodolite, sextant, map of the     continent, Hansard’s Directory of Navigational Techniques, and a planar alidade.

- A what?

          I stood there astonished, holding out an irregular pile of scientific instruments which she had clattered into my arms.

- But, Lady Helena. The problem is –

          Gloria barged in with:

- And don’t forget the sledge meter; that’s the big bicycle wheel thingy on the end.

- But Lady Helena –

- Oh don’t look so glum, Dr. Gardiner. There will be plenty of opportunities for your medical pursuits. You can do all your scientific gubbins when we’re out there; it won’t be all typing and dictation, you know.

- But, Lady Helena. I am not a scientist. That is what I’ve been trying to say.

- But you’re a doctor. You said so.

- I am a musicologist. Doctor of Music. Didn’t you get my references?

          While Lady H. considered this important statement, Gloria said:

- Not medical then. Not one of those useful doctors.

- No. I’m an early music specialist. Sumer is icumen in, lhude syng cuccu.

- But you went to Newnham!

- Girton.

- And the Royal College.

- Royal College of Music. The RCM.

- So you’re not medical then.

- No. Whatever gave you that idea.

          There was a long pause. Seagulls cried overhead, and I heard the anchor rattling up on its chain.

- Oh bugger. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.

          She turned towards me with a horrified expression, but before she could say anything, there was a raucous blast from the funnel. The deck underneath me began to slant and ride; then I suddenly found we were slipping away from the jetty, and a length of dirty green water was separating us from the land I loved. Only one question remained. What on earth was a planar alidade?