You could barely hear a pin drop as Sir Ranulph Fiennes related the highs and lows of his extraordinary 50-year career.
The man who has been described as “the world’s greatest living explorer” enthralled 440 teenagers and their teachers last week when he delivered the annual Prince’s Teaching Institute (PTI) lecture.
Sir Ranulph’s theme was “living dangerously” and as he spoke about his experiences, from becoming the first person to circumnavigate the world along its polar axis to discovering the lost city of Ubar on the Yemen, the audience sat in rapt attention.
Teachers and students alike were stunned by his remarkable courage, determination and resilience.
Sir Ranulph has climbed Mount Everest, scaled the north face of the Eiger, was the first person to cross the Antarctic continent on foot (along with human endurance and nutrition expert Dr Mike Stroud), and has broken a string of other world records.
In 2003, just three-and-a-half months after suffering a massive heart attack and undergoing a double bypass operation, he ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.
The only time there was a murmur from the audience was when Sir Ranulph, who has endured some of the coldest and most hostile conditions on the planet in his endless quest for discovery, showed slides of the frostbite and gangrene he and his team had suffered during the course of their expeditions.
“We were in a very bad way,” he admitted. He lost the fingertips and tip of his thumb on his left hand due to frostbite in 2000.
The PTI, which aims to inspire teachers in their subject disciplines, develop their subject expertise through professional development, and bring the latest thinking into the classroom, had invited schools to send groups of year 11 to 13 students to Sir Ranulph’s lecture.
Held at the Royal Institution in London, the event attracted teachers and pupils from 59 schools across the country, including Alexandra Park School in north London, East London Science School, Harewood College in Bournemouth, Saffron Walden County High School, St Paul’s Way Trust School in east London, and Stewards Academy in Harlow.
At a time when many schools are highlighting the importance of young people’s character and are focusing on developing skills of resilience, teachers in the audience said they were keen to use Sir Ranulph’s story as an example of how it is possible to overcome adversity and succeed. Indeed, in her introduction to the talk, Bernice McCabe, the co-director of the PTI and head of North London Collegiate School, said: “Anyone who thinks they can’t do things only has to listen to Sir Ranulph’s story for inspiration.”
Simon Decker, executive headteacher of Rainham Mark Grammar School in Kent, had jumped at the chance to hear Sir Ranulph speak: “We are doing a lot of work on character development at our school and what better example of endeavour and resilience is there than Sir Ranulph Fiennes?” he said.
Sir Ranulph started his story with his own education, admitting that he left Eton College without any A levels and therefore “had to find an alternative route“ in life. He joined the army for eight years and was later seconded to the SAS.
In 1968 he married his first wife Ginnie (she died of cancer in 2004) and they planned his expeditions together. It was she, for instance, who suggested navigating the Nile by hovercraft and finding the lost city of Ubar. She became an expert in communications and at one point, said Sir Ranulph, drew up the plans for one of his Arctic expeditions using her old school globe and a crayon. “We would never have done any of it if Ginnie had not been the mastermind behind it,” he added.
Sir Ranulph is now 72 and has led 32 major expeditions to remote parts of the world, won five medals and been awarded the OBE for “human endeavour and charitable services”. He has written 23 books and to date has raised more than £18 million for UK charities.
What emerged most strongly during the talk, however, was Sir Ranulph’s belief in character and motivation – and in making sure you fight “the wimpish weak voice in your head telling you to stop”.
Sir Ranulph described character as “the sum total of everything that has happened to you and how you reacted to it”.
He added that when he whittled down 800 applicants to two for one particular expedition the team members he chose “had no skills whatsoever, but their character was great”. He was joking, of course, but the audience got the gist.
At the end of the hour-long lecture, PTI co-director Chris Pope started the Q&A session with a question of his own, echoing the sentiments of the entire lecture theatre. “Sir Ranulph,” he began, “why?”
Sir Ranulph, in his typically low-key style, didn’t hesitate for a second. “Because of my lack of A levels,” he quipped, although he added that today’s would-be explorers needed to specialise – and not fail their A levels like he did.
Mr Pope suggested, however, that the explorer must be driven by “the satisfaction of knowing that you have overcome a huge challenge” and Sir Ranulph agreed. The impetus, he said, was “when there is a remaining polar expedition that no-one has managed to bust and finding a new way of overcoming that obstacle”.
He explained that although he had done solo expeditions he preferred to do them with another person – people like the late Charlie Burton (a key member of the transglobe expedition led by Sir Ranulph between 1979 and 1982) and Dr Mike Stroud.
Asked by a student about the strategies for survival that had benefited him most he replied that it was crucial to have “real knowledge” of food and nutrition and the cold.
Another teenager quizzed him about what he did for entertainment during his arctic expeditions. The answer? Clearing tonnes of snow and doing scientific work.
The verdict on Sir Ranulph’s talk was unanimous. “He was totally inspirational,” said Nicola Turvey, head of humanities at Woodside High School in Wood Green, north London, who had brought 14 year 10 geography students with her and was queuing up for a signed copy of Sir Ranulph’s latest book.
“I kept looking down the line of students and I could see they were completely captivated. I think they were very struck by the motivation he showed and the teamwork involved. He really brought his experiences alive.
“Incredible and informative, hilarious and humbling,” tweeted English teacher Alice Penfold, while others used words like “inspiring”, “jaw-dropping” and “an example for us all”.
Two teachers from Chiswick School in west London, geography teacher Hugh Gilroy and Holly Thomas, who is director of learning for key stage 5, said they were keen to use Sir Ranulph’s endeavours to inspire pupils in PSHE and careers sessions: “It’s so important to broaden students’ horizons beyond the curriculum and to encourage them to have a passion for something in this exam-focused age,” said Ms Thomas.
“Living dangerously is one way of describing Sir Ranulph’s achievements. Living fantastically is how I would put it – never shying away from a challenge, no matter how hard it may seem.”
- Emma Lee-Potter is a freelance education journalist.
Further information
For more information about the Prince’s Teaching Institute, go to www.princes-ti.org.uk