UK PUBLICATION: SEPTEMBER 2026

AMERICAN PUBLICATION: SPRING 2027

From internationally bestselling historian Giles Milton comes the remarkable true story of one man’s attempt to claim the High Arctic for the British Empire.

1913, THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

Charismatic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson is obsessed with a frozen speck of land in the Siberian Arctic: Wrangel Island.

Believing that whoever possesses it will control the future of the northern hemisphere - air routes, resources, even the balance of power - he takes an impossible gamble. Dispatching a small, ill-equipped venture to stake a frozen colony in Britain’s name, it is a manoeuvre of brilliance, ego and breathtaking hubris.

What follows is a catastrophe of starvation, madness, and geopolitical risk. As winter locks the island in ice, rescue ships fail to arrive and tensions among the colonists spiral toward despair. While diplomats spar and warships are made ready, the settlers are left to endure scurvy, polar bears and the slow terror of abandonment. At the centre of it all stands one unlikely survivor - a young indigenous seamstress who can outlast them all.

Sweeping, chilling and stranger than fiction, Empire at the Edge of the World is a story of jeopardy and greed at the edge of the world.

UK AND US EDITIONS WILL SOON BE AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER FROM:
UK: Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Amazon

USA: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Bookshop, Powells, Target.