You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has lived a life which reads like the plot of an implausible boy's own adventure story.

Ranulfe Fines comes from a family with a long and proud military tradition. His father was killed in action, commanding a British cavalry regiment in World

War II before Ranulf was born. And in a sense, his life has been a quest to make the father he never knew

proud. The young Ranulf served make the father he never knew proud.

The young Ranulf served in the same regiment as his father.

But it was after military service that he made his name, undertaking a series of ever more

dangerous and extreme expeditions, which saw him navigate both poles on foot, climb the world's highest peaks,

discover a lost city in the Arabian desert, and a host of other death-defying feats of endurance.

He's been described as one of the world's greatest living explorers,

but his exploits prompt a nagging question.

What really has been the point of this quest for ever more extreme challenges?

Well, Sir Ranul Feinz joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you very much.

Seems to me your entire life you've spent testing yourself, challenging yourself. Why this preoccupation with tests?

It doesn't come about in that particular way. It comes about because of being brought up in South

Africa, arriving in the UK, not getting A-levels. That's what it comes from. Because what I wanted

to do was what my dad had done,

commanding the Royal Scotscray's Tank Regiment when he was killed in the Second World War.

And I wanted to command that same wonderful Scottish regiment.

But in his day, you didn't require A-levels to get Sandhurst.

In my time, you did, and I couldn't.

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