Truth to power ...

To Orkney and back, for a meeting - and took the opportunity to dive quickly into St Magnus Cathedral to grab this shot of the memorial to John Rae, a native Orcadian, and (depending on the success criteria applied) probably Britain's most successful polar explorer of the pre-WWI era. Like Amundsen, he was prepared to learn from indigenous people of the Arctic how to travel and live off the land - which meant working as far as possible with the forces of nature, rather than trying to fight against them (which was the more typical 19th-century style, that led to disaster after disaster, and the development of a cult of "noble sacrifice", exemplified by Scott "of the Antarctic", and John Franklin).  At the time of his disappearance, Franklin was a naval officer and a national hero; Rae's reporting of evidence of cannibalism during the failure of Franklin's final, fatal expedition seems to have upset the British establishment. Still, Rae lived to 80:  

The inscription reads:  "John Rae MD LLD FRS* FRGS**; Arctic explorer; intrepid discoverer of the fate of Sir John Franklin's last expedition; born 1813 died 1893; expeditions 1846-7, 1848-9, 1851-2, 1853-4"

* - Fellow of the Royal Society; ** - Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.  Both are "establishment" scholarly scientific bodies, so Rae wasn't completely shut out - but if he too had been a naval officer, it's highly likely he would have (a) not mentioned people eating each other and (b) been made Sir John Rae, or similar.

Ho hum.  But he had style; and he survived ...