Ranulph Fiennes

After graduating from the Mons Officer Cadet School on 27 July 1963 Fiennes served in his father's regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, and was seconded to the Special Air Service where he specialised in demolitions.[5]

Service life was enlivened by various scrapes and escapades, including an occasion when Fiennes and another officer procured a very lively, squirming piglet, covered it with tank grease and slipped it into the crowded ballroom of the army's Staff College, Camberley. On another occasion, offended by the construction of an ugly concrete dam built by 20th Century Fox[6] for the production of the film Doctor Dolittle in the Wiltshire village of Castle Combe, reputedly the prettiest village in England, Fiennes planned to demolish the dam. He used explosives which he later claimed to have accumulated from leftovers on training exercises.[6] Using skills from a recently completed training course on evading search dogs by night, he escaped capture, but he and a guilty colleague were both subsequently traced. After a court case, Fiennes had to pay a large fine and he and his co-conspirator were discharged from the SAS. Fiennes was initially posted to another cavalry regiment but was subsequently permitted to return to the Royal Scots Greys.

Becoming disillusioned by his British Army service, in particular his career prospects, he spent the last two years of his service seconded to the army of the Sultan of Oman. At the time, Oman was experiencing a growing communist insurgency supported from neighbouring South Yemen. Fiennes had a crisis of conscience soon after arriving in Oman, as he became aware of the Sultan's poor government. However he decided that the oppression threatened by a communist takeover, combined with moves towards progressive change within the Sultanate system, justified his part in the conflict. After familiarisation, he commanded the Reconnaissance Platoon of the Muscat Regiment, seeing extensive active service in the Dhofar Rebellion. He led several raids deep into rebel-held territory on the Djebel Dhofar and was decorated for bravery by the Sultanate. After eight years' service Fiennes relinquished his commission on 27 July 1971.[7]

Since the 1960s Fiennes has been an expedition leader. He led expeditions up the White Nile on a hovercraft in 1969 and on Norway's Jostedalsbreen Glacier in 1970. One notable trek was the Transglobe Expedition he undertook between 1979 and 1982 when he and two fellow members of 21 SAS, Oliver Shepard and Charles R. Burton, journeyed around the world on its polar axis, using surface transport only. Nobody else has ever done so by any route before or since.[8][9][10]

As part of the Transglobe Expedition, Fiennes and Burton completed the Northwest Passage. They left Tuktoyaktuk on 26 July 1981, in an 18 ft open Boston Whaler and reached Tanquary Fiord on 31 August 1981.[11] Their journey was the first open boat transit from West to East and covered around 3,000 miles (2,600 nautical miles or 4,800 km) taking a route through Dolphin and Union Strait following the south coast of Victoria Island and King William Island, north to Resolute Bay via the Franklin Strait and Peel Sound, around the south and east coasts of Devon Island, through Hell Gate and across Norwegian Bay to Eureka, Greely Bay and the head of Tanquary Fiord.[11] Once they reached Tanquary Fiord, they had to trek a further 150 miles via Lake Hazen to Alert before setting up their winter base camp.

In 1992 Fiennes led an expedition that discovered what may be an outpost of the lost city of Iram in Oman. The following year he joined nutrition specialist Dr Mike Stroud to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent unsupported; they took 93 days. A further attempt in 1996 to walk to the South Pole solo, in aid of the Breast Cancer Campaign, was unsuccessful due to a kidney stone attack and he had to be rescued from the operation by his crew.

In 2000 he attempted to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole. The expedition failed when his sleds fell through weak ice and Fiennes was forced to pull them out by hand. He sustained severe frostbite to the tips of all the fingers on his left hand, forcing him to abandon the attempt. On returning home, his surgeon insisted the necrotic fingertips be retained for several months before amputation, to allow regrowth of the remaining healthy tissue. Impatient at the pain the dying fingertips caused, Fiennes cut them off himself with an electric fretsaw,[12] just above where the blood and the soreness was.[6][13]

Despite suffering from a heart attack and undergoing a double heart bypass operation just four months before, Fiennes joined Stroud again in 2003 to complete seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in the Land Rover 7x7x7 Challenge for the British Heart Foundation. "In retrospect I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't do it again. It was Mike Stroud's idea".[6] Their series of marathons was as follows:

• 26 October – Race 1: Patagonia - South America
• 27 October – Race 2: Falkland Islands - "Antarctica"
• 28 October – Race 3: Sydney - Australia
• 29 October – Race 4: Singapore - Asia
• 30 October – Race 5: London - Europe
• 31 October – Race 6: Cairo - Africa
• 1 November – Race 7: New York City - North America

Originally Fiennes had planned to run the first marathon on King George Island, Antarctica. The second marathon would then have taken place in Santiago, Chile. However, bad weather and aeroplane engine trouble caused him to change his plans, running the South American segment in southern Patagonia first and then hopping to the Falklands as a substitute for the Antarctic leg.

Speaking after the event, Fiennes said the Singapore Marathon had been by far the most difficult because of high humidity and pollution. He also said his cardiac surgeon had approved the marathons, providing his heart-rate did not exceed 130 beats per minute. Fiennes later said that he forgot to pack his heart-rate monitor, and therefore did not know how fast his heart was beating.

In June 2005, Fiennes had to abandon an attempt to be the oldest Briton to climb Mount Everest when, in another climb for charity, he was forced to turn back as a result of heart problems, after reaching the final stopping point of the ascent. In March 2007, despite a lifelong fear of heights, Fiennes climbed the Eiger by its North Face, with sponsorship totalling £1.8 million to be paid to the Marie Curie Cancer Care Delivering Choice Programme. Kenton Cool first met Fiennes in 2004, and subsequently guided him in the Alps and Himalayas.[14]

Fiennes in 2011

In 2008 Fiennes made his second attempt to climb Mount Everest, getting to within 400 metres (1,300 ft) of the summit before bad timing and bad weather stopped the expedition. On 20 May 2009 Fiennes reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the oldest British person to achieve this. Fiennes also became the first person ever to have climbed Everest and crossed both polar ice-caps.[15] Of the other handful of adventurers who had visited both poles, only four had successfully crossed both polar icecaps: Norwegian Børge Ousland, Belgian Alain Hubert and Fiennes. In successfully reaching the summit of Everest in 2009 Fiennes became the first person ever to achieve all three goals. Ousland wrote to congratulate him.[16] Fiennes continues to compete in UK-based endurance events and has seen recent success in the veteran categories of some Mountain Marathon races. His training nowadays consists of regular two-hour runs around Exmoor.

In September 2012 it was announced that Fiennes was to lead the first attempt to cross Antarctica during the southern winter, in aid of the charity Seeing is Believing, an initiative to prevent avoidable blindness. The six-man team was dropped off by ship at Crown Bay in Queen Maud Land in January 2013, and waited until the Southern Hemisphere's autumnal equinox on 21 March 2013 before embarking across the ice shelf. The team would ascend 10,000 feet (3,000 m) onto the inland plateau, and head to the South Pole. The intention was for Fiennes and his skiing partner, Dr Mike Stroud,[17] to lead on foot and be followed by two bulldozers dragging industrial sledges.[18]

Fiennes had to pull out of The Coldest Journey expedition on 25 February 2013 because of frostbite and was evacuated from Antarctica.[19][20]

Fiennes' career as an author has developed alongside his career as an explorer: he is the author of 24 fiction and non-fiction books,[21] including The Feather Men. In 2003, he published a biography of Captain Robert Falcon Scott which attempted to provide a robust defence of Scott's achievements and reputation, which had been strongly questioned by biographers such as Roland Huntford. Although others have made comparisons between Fiennes and Scott, Fiennes says he identifies more with Lawrence Oates, another member of Scott's doomed Antarctic team.

Fiennes stood for the Countryside Party in the 2004 European elections in the South West England region – fourth on their list of six. The party received 30,824 votes – insufficient for any of their candidates to be elected. Contrary to some reports, he has never been an official patron of the UK Independence Party.[22] He is also a member of the libertarian pressure group The Freedom Association.[23] In August 2014, Fiennes was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.[24]

As a guest on the British motoring television programme Top Gear, as a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, his test track lap time, in a Suzuki Liana was 1:51, putting him 26th out of 65. He also appeared in the Polar Special episode, casually berating the three hosts for their flippant attitude toward the dangers of the Arctic.

According to an interview on Top Gear, Fiennes was considered for the role of James Bond during the casting process, making it to the final six contenders, but was rejected by Cubby Broccoli for having "hands too big and a face like a farmer", and Roger Moore was eventually chosen.[25] Fiennes related this tale again during one of his appearances on Countdown, in which he referred also to a brief film career that included an appearance alongside Liz Frazer.[26]

Between 1 and 5 October 2012, and again from 13 to 19 November 2013, Fiennes featured on the Channel 4 game show Countdown as the celebrity guest in 'Dictionary Corner' and provided interludes based on his life stories and explorations.

Most recently Fiennes was an expert guest commentator on the PBS documentary Chasing Shackleton which aired in January 2014. Fiennes makes a number of corporate and after dinner speeches.[27]

In 2019, Fiennes appeared in a three part National Geographic documentary Egypt with the World's Greatest Explorer (also titled Fiennes Return to Egypt) with his cousin and actor Joseph Fiennes that re-traced his first expedition in Egypt back in the 1960s.[28]