Ranulph Fiennes: What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

The question

What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Ranulph Fiennes

English explorer

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

In 1982, having travelled for three years to do the first journey around the earth on its polar axis. Charles Burton and I were trying to get from the north pole down to our ship on the edge of the Arctic Sea. We had to float for three months on a diminishing ice floe. Eventually we had to leave the floe and try to get to the ship in canoes with skis under them. In the maze of broken ice we saw its masts on the horizon. That second was probably my happiest moment.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 31 May 2008 source ↗

Others on this question

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Rebecca Front English actress, writer and comedian

Last night, having dinner with the family round the kitchen table.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 July 2015 source ↗

Nicholson Baker Contemporary American novelist and writer

When we had children at home. But recently I finished a book about old secrets that I’ve been working on for a long time, and when I was done, I felt a gigantic, joyful relief in having escaped from the corn maze of remembered facts in which I’d been wandering for so long.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 August 2020 source ↗

Rory Bremner Scottish comedian