Clara’s Verdict
I came to this one during a particularly grey January weekend, the kind where you want to travel but cannot, and Michael Palin delivered exactly what I needed: the sensation of motion without leaving the sofa. Pole to Pole is the second of his epic BBC travel series, following Around the World in 80 Days, and it holds up extraordinarily well more than three decades on. What strikes you first is how genuinely present Palin is as a narrator of his own story. He reads his own diary entries with the warmth of a man revisiting photographs he loves, and that intimacy makes all the difference. This is not a polished media personality performing enthusiasm. It is someone who went, observed, felt, and now remembers.
This is not a travelogue that strains for profundity. Palin is too honest for that. The comedy is never forced; it emerges naturally from the situations he finds himself in. Beating himself with birch twigs in a Finnish sauna, consulting a witch-doctor in Mpulugu, sampling seal lasagne in Tromsoe. What gives the journey its unexpected weight is the timing: Palin crosses the western Soviet Union in the very weeks before its collapse, and those passages carry a kind of accidental historical witness that no amount of planning could have manufactured. He was not there to document the end of an empire. He was there to get from one pole to another. That accidental proximity is what makes this particular journey so remarkable on audio.
About the Audiobook
The premise is beautifully simple: travel from the North Pole to the South Pole, following the 30-degree line of longitude as closely as possible, by every means available except air. What this produces is a route that takes Palin through Scandinavia and into the crumbling Soviet Union, down through East Africa, and across to Antarctica via South Africa. Sixteen countries in total, traversed by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon, and bicycle.
The journey spans some of the most geopolitically significant territory of the late twentieth century. Palin attends a baby-rolling ceremony at a Cypriot wedding, stares into the machinery of Soviet bureaucracy, and sits with fisherfolk in Kigoma over bowls of goat stew. These are not exotic set pieces. They are observations made with the patient curiosity of someone who genuinely wants to understand the people he meets rather than tick them off a list. At nine hours and fifty-nine minutes, the audiobook mirrors a journey that never quite resolves into a single meaning, and is richer for it. Published by Audible Studios and released in October 2012, it carries a 4.6 rating from 869 Audible UK listeners, a figure that speaks to consistent, sustained appreciation rather than a single wave of enthusiasm.
The route’s originality also lies in its constraints. Palin cannot simply fly when things get difficult, and watching him problem-solve his way through logistical obstacles (the Antarctic leg ultimately required a flight from Punta Arenas, which some reviewers have noted as a deviation) produces the kind of on-the-ground comedy that his television work always captured. The audio format strips away the visual, which means Palin’s prose descriptions of landscape and people must carry more weight than they do on screen, and they largely succeed.
The Narration
Self-narrated travel memoirs live or die by the author’s vocal presence, and Palin is instinctively good at this. His voice carries the same quality his television audiences know: slightly amused, quietly thoughtful, never condescending. He reads the diary entries with a light comic touch that never tips into performance. The shift from the recorded television commentary to the more personal diary sections creates a pleasing contrast in register: the public Palin and the private one, both present and distinct.
There are moments in the Soviet chapters where his voice carries something closer to awe, and those passages benefit from his self-narration in ways a hired voice actor simply could not replicate. The sense of a man genuinely processing what he has witnessed, rather than reciting a script, is audible in those sequences. For a journey that happened to catch history in the act of transforming itself, having the person who was present read the account is not a production convenience. It is an editorial necessity.
What Readers Say
UK listeners have been consistently enthusiastic, with the series holding a 4.6 rating across 869 reviews. Several point to the Soviet Union sequences as the audiobook’s standout passages. One reviewer described it as a « mesmerising glimpse of real life at the end of the Cold War era, » noting that Palin’s accidental proximity to the USSR’s final weeks transforms what might have been an adventure travelogue into something closer to witness literature. Another, writing from deep familiarity with Palin’s output, reached for a Rush lyric to sum up the philosophy: « The point of a journey is not to arrive. » It is the encounters along the route, not the poles themselves, that give this journey its meaning. A small number of reviewers raised mild objections about Palin’s route choices, particularly the Antarctic leg. It is a fair point, but a quibble rather than a flaw in what is otherwise a richly entertaining and historically lucky piece of travel writing.
Who Should Listen?
If you love travel writing that observes without judging, or if you have any interest in the Soviet Union during its final gasps, this is the audiobook for you. It works beautifully for listeners who came to Palin via the television series and want to experience the diary entries in his own voice. Less suited to listeners looking for high narrative tension or a strong argumentative thesis. This is companionable rather than challenging listening, and thoroughly satisfying on those terms. Perfect for long journeys, long walks, or grey January weekends.
