SOURCE: "Death in the North," in Quill & Quire, Vol. 54, No. 11, November, 1988, p. 2.

In the following review, Davies focuses on Berton's depiction of Sir John Franklin in The Arctic Grail.

Judging by appearances, there was never a less likely hero than Sir John Franklin. For most of his adult life Franklin was balding, overweight, and out of shape. He struck his fellow officers in the Royal Navy as being overly sensitive. He winced at floggings—a fairly common occurrence in 19th century naval service—and he fared poorly in confrontational situations. "Chicanery made him ill," his son-in-law, Philip Gell, would later write, "and so paralysed him that when he had to deal with it he was scarcely himself." Today, Franklin would be considered a wimp.

Nor was he a sophisticate in intellectual or spiritual affairs. He was horribly uncomfortable in drawing-room conversations and scarcely more relaxed in his correspondence...