The bones of a British man who died in a terrible accident in Antarctica in 1959 have been discovered in a melting glacier.
The remains were found in January by a Polish Antarctic expedition, alongside a wristwatch, a radio, and a pipe.
He has now been formally identified as Dennis “Tink” Bell, who fell into a crevasse aged 25 when working for the organisation that became the British Antarctic Survey.
“I had long given up on finding my brother. It is just remarkable, astonishing. I can’t get over it,” David Bell, 86, tells BBC News.
“Dennis was one of the many brave personnel who contributed to the early science and exploration of Antarctica under extraordinarily harsh conditions,” says Professor Dame Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey .
“Even though he was lost in 1959, his memory lived on among colleagues and in the legacy of polar research,” she adds.
It was David who answered the door in his family home in Harrow, London, in July 1959.
“The telegram boy said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but this is bad news’,” he says. He went upstairs to tell his parents.
“It was a horrendous moment,” he adds.
Talking to me from his home in Australia and sitting next to his wife Yvonne, David smiles as stories from his childhood in 1940s England spill out.
They are the memories of a younger sibling admiring a charming, adventurous big brother.
“Dennis was fantastic company. He was very amusing. The life and soul of wherever he happened to be,” David says.
“I still can’t get over this, but one evening when me, my mother and father came home from the cinema,” he says.
“And I have to say this in fairness to Dennis, he had put a newspaper down on the kitchen table, but on top of it, he’d taken a motorbike engine apart and it was all over the table,” he says.
“I can remember his style of dress, he always used to wear duffel coats. He was just an average sort of fellow who enjoyed life,” he adds.
