The Exclusives: North Pole (to South Pole) "Hallo" "Are you there? I say old man, they nearly had you that time."/voice from South Pole. "Yes, I know - There'll soon be no such thing as privacy" [With Mr Punch's best compliments to Lieutenant Shackleton]

Townsend's cartoon celebrates Shackleton's new southern record, reaching 88°23'S, just under one hundred miles short of the South Pole on 9 January, 1909: 'At home, Shackleton had become a national hero overnight. Edwardian England knew how to honour success, and its ultimate reward was the exclusive, scintillating and exacting summer social round called the London Season. Of that, Shackleton was "the undisputed Lion", as one gossip columnist authoritatively put it ...Shackleton appealed to journalists. As a polar hero, he was the creation of the press. When he emerged from Charing Cross Station, the crowd was there to meet him. It was the opening of an uninterrupted season of acclaim.' (R. Huntford, Shackleton, London, 1996, pp.294-302.)