CHARLIE approached the South Pole at 2am on February 4, 1977. His beard was as white as the Antarctic ice and his mouth was curved into a smile. This was history in the making. As the polar sun shone overhead and the frozen plains lay unyielding in the sub-zero wilderness, his momentous hour had arrived. Charlie had become the first garden gnome to reach the southernmost point on earth.
Our eccentric obsession with gnomes is a remarkable thing. Here in Britain, their perky hats and bulbous noses peek out of shrubberies from Portobello Road to Penzance. They appear in films, books, video games and advertising campaigns. They are potbellied perennials, chortling through winter downpours and summer heatwaves. And, as evidenced by Charlie—who had a
