Every Era has its Odyssey

A November afternoon in the final years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

Rain pebbled the schoolroom window. Outside lay sodden playing fields. Inside, rows of boys in scratchy jackets and stiff collars.

The Greek lesson was underway.

Verbs plodded obediently across the blackboard. Declensions assembled in neat ranks. The master’s voice droned on. Until, sensing mutiny, he shut the grammar.

”Gentlemen," he said, “Homer.”

And began to read The Odyssey.

Before the bell, Adventure had seized young Peabody Fawcett by the lapels.

The rain became salty spray. His inkwell, a ship’s compass. Gods walked amongst fishermen and kings. Blustering winds were bound in leather bags. Caverns rang with bellowing giants. Islands appeared and vanished like dreams. Great halls blazed with firelight and feasting.

Every stranger carried a story.

Every voyage changed the man who forged ahead.

Alas, Ancient Greek was to remain forever a mystery. Fortunately, adventure needs no translation.

For there are moments in a man's life when the globe ceases to be geography…and becomes destiny.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S ‘THE ODYSSEY’

The lesson that changed young Peabody's life continues to cast its spell today.

This July Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey arrives in cinemas for a new generation. True to form, Nolan has shot the film entirely with IMAX cameras, creating a spectacle intended for the grandeur of IMAX 70mm, a scale worthy of Homer's greatest voyage.

Starring Matt Damon as Odysseus and Tom Holland as his son Telemachus, it is a phenomenally epic telling of a story that has captivated readers, artists, filmmakers and explorers for almost three thousand years.

The Odyssey remains one of the great foundations of Western storytelling: storms and shipwrecks, monsters and miracles, wit, endurance and the long road home. Every adventure that has followed owes it something.

Homer’s spirit has been inspiring explorers ever since. Indeed, Fawcett founder Richie Finney has pursued more than a few Great Expeditions of his own, from film sets to Arctic snows, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the forests of Cambodia and, ultimately, to the rediscovery of Captain Fawcett's remarkable journals.

Every age discovers adventure anew. The finest storytellers simply invite us aboard.

CAPTAIN FAWCETT’S ADVENTURES BEGIN…

By the following Wednesday, the Fourth Remove, under the energetic leadership of one Peabody Fawcett, had constructed a raft from materials now impossible to account for.

The destination was the island in the middle of the school pond.

The voyage lasted three minutes.

Concluding rather abruptly in a tangle of reeds, cold water and disciplinary proceedings during which the Head was heard to splutter "wilful nautical idiocy.”

Undaunted, Captain Fawcett's notebook records the matter rather differently:

First Expedition.

Outcome: Splendid.

School regulations plainly drafted by persons of limited vision.

KEEPING A STIFF UPPER LIP REGARDLESS.

ONWARDS CHUMS!

Years later, that irrepressible schoolboy, now an explorer of considerable renown, set off in search of a distant tributary of the Ubangi River and the botanical marvels said to flourish upon its banks. His journals speak of emerald forests, rare orchids, whispering rivers and impossible tracks. Yet the deeper he ventured, the more sparing he became with directions. Some paths, perchance, belonged only to those who called them home.

Did the Captain have a Penelope waiting patiently at home? His journals are remarkably discreet on the matter. After all, a true gentleman does not chronicle every corner of his heart.

The fact remains: Captain Fawcett was never seen again.

COMING HOME

Incredibly, over a century later…Captain Fawcett’s weathered travelling case surfaced at an English house sale. Inside were journals, pressed botanical specimens, curious instruments and an astonishing collection of grooming preparations, each faithfully recorded in the Captain's meticulous hand.

Those recipes live on today, lovingly recreated for gentleman who still believe the next adventure may prove his finest yet.

For every era has its Odyssey.

The world has not yet run out of wonders.

Nor, one trusts, of gentlemen ready to answer their call.