The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic Edited by Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford Granta Books £25, 288 pages FT bookshop price: £20

Here we are in the International Polar Year, and, as the Poles threaten to melt away, here are two handsome little books to remember them by. In the second volume in this twin set – the Arctic anthology – Elizabeth Kolbert has done a neat job, summoning up witnesses to the frozen seas of the far north. It falls to Francis I May Be Some Time Spufford to do the same for the land mass of the extreme south – and I can’t think of anyone I’d have preferred the compendium to be edited by.