Scott's lost photos of Antarctica are bought for nation

The last photographs taken by Captain Robert Scott on his doomed journey to the South Pole have been bought for the nation in time for today's centenary of the expedition.

The 109 images, documenting the first part of Scott's Antarctic journey, were thought lost for almost 70 years because the negatives had been misplaced and the prints were in private hands. When the collection resurfaced at a New York auction in 2001, it was bought by a London-based book dealer. He had planned to sell them on – but now they have been bought by the Scott Polar Research Institute with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Scott and his colleagues arrived on 17 January 1912 to discover they had been beaten to the pole 33 days earlier by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. Scott and his men died on the return journey.

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