THE world's greatest living explorer found his way to Hammicks bookshop in Worcester yesterday.

Ranulph Fiennes OBE, who became the first man to reach both Poles by surface travel in 1982, has turned his hand to writing and was in the Faithful City to sign copies of his latest novel.

The Secret Hunters follows hot on the heels of his two previous best-selling books, The Feather Men and The Sett.

It is an action-thriller based on the real diary of a man called Derek Jacobs, which Fiennes found in an abandoned hut in Antarctica in 1995.

The story charts Jacobs' revenge for the atrocities meted out to him and his family during a death march in Cambodia, and his subsequent recruitment into an elite group called the Secret Hunters, which takes on an international, modern-day Nazi network.

Some authors, such as Frederick Forsythe, produce a work of fiction, portions of which are based on real events and real people, said Mr Fiennes, who weaves fact and experience to come up with an entrancing tale.

I don't see why people shouldn't take the fact and write it to make it appear as if it's fiction it's up to the reader to decide which way around it is, he added mysteriously.

Biography

Fiennes is also the author of numerous works of expedition biography, including Beyond the Limits The Lessons Learned From a Lifetime's Adventures.

Born in Windsor, he spent his early years in South Africa before going on to serve in the SAS and the Army of the Sultan of Oman.

and in 1991 he was the first person to cross the Antarctic land mass unsupported.

He lives in Exmoor with his wife Ginnie, a beef farmer, and when he is not writing he spends his time training for and taking part in endurance races.

He is also currently planning an expedition to find a "lost" city in Arabia that he has identified.