Nicholas Crane Interviewed by Nick Higham

Explorer, geographer and BBC Coast presenter Nicholas Crane tells how an 18th-century team of scientists set sail across the Atlantic on a ten-year quest to find the length of one degree of latitude.

Crane says the journey was an epic tale of survival and science, egos and disease, storms and earthquakes, mutiny and murder. The team visited unmapped rainforests and ice-shrouded volcanoes in their search for the figure. Along the way they made breakthroughs in rubber and platinum, gravity and fogbows, quinine, and Inca archaeology.

Crane is a writer, journalist, broadcaster, and geographer. He has presented BBC series, Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town. His books include The Making of the British Landscape, Great British Journeys, Clear Waters Rising, Two Degrees West and Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet. Here he talks to journalist Nick Higham, who was the BBC’s first ever media correspondent and is a former presenter of Meet the Author on the BBC news channel.