In conversation with… author Rob Burnett

05/06/2025

We chat with Falkland Islander Rob Burnett about his debut novel, a survival thriller set in Antarctica, growing up in the South Atlantic, and his love of Lego.

Rob Burnett grew up in the Falkland Islands and first wrote for the weekly newspaper, Penguin News, the Islands’ only locally produced newspaper. After moving to London and spending over a decade working for the Daily Mirror and in Formula 1, Rob is now a freelance journalist and once again, living in the Falklands.

His debut novel, survival thriller Whiteout, was recently published by HarperCollins and named one of The Times' best thrillers of 2025. As such, we caught up with him for a chat about his book, life in the Falklands and his love of Lego. 

What was it like growing up in the Falkland Islands?

I loved it. It’s a very safe place – there’s very little crime and everyone knows everyone – so as kids, we had a lot of freedom. My friends and I would go off on our bikes, ride down to the beach and be out all day. My Dad would take us out fishing, and when we got a bit older, we’d be out messing around on motorbikes. It was great fun. The friends I made here as a kid are still some of my closest friends to this day.

Rob grew up in the Falklands (Rob Burnett)

I’m too young to remember the 1982 war, but there were lots of reminders of it when I was growing up. There were lots of minefields near Stanley (and elsewhere), and every term we had the military bomb disposal experts come into school to teach us what to do if we ever found a mine. Yorke Bay – a beautiful white sand beach near Stanley with a resident penguin colony – was heavily mined. I never thought I’d ever set foot on it, but it was cleared in 2020, and when I moved back to the Falklands the following year, walking on that beach for the first time was a very moving experience. 

What is a typical story in Penguin News? 

The Penguin News was the very first publication ever to pay me to write, so it holds a special place in my heart.

The editor and her staff have a tricky job because they have to be both a local paper covering the winners of the annual Horticultural Show, golden wedding anniversaries and the like, but also a national paper covering the latest developments on the situation with Argentina and our relationship with the UK. It can be a tricky balance.

The Penguin News office on Ross Road, Stanley (Nikolas Moya/CC BY 2.0)

This week’s edition has a story about potential changes to the internet provision here in the Falklands (a very controversial subject right now), news about two fishing vessels colliding, and a feature on some veterans of the 1982 conflict who have been back for a visit.

There’s also a piece about the Falklands’ plan to reach 100% renewable energy provision by 2045, as well as a report on the West Falklands Sports meeting at Fox Bay – an annual week-long event that includes traditional Falklands activities like peat cutting, sheep shearing, dog trials and foot events.

The back page this week is a full-page ad about a new range of cat food that’s just arrived on the last supply boat from the UK!

You worked in Formula 1. That must have been quite a different pace of life from that of the South Atlantic. How did you get into that?

After I completed a degree in English at university in the UK, I later did a post-graduate journalism course and then got a job on a local paper in Buckinghamshire, covering all the news on my ‘patch’ – including reporting on matches at the local football club, Chesham United. After a couple of years, I managed to get a job on the sports desk at the Daily Mirror in London, eventually becoming the Online Sports Editor.

After eight years at the Mirror, I worked for a couple of other outlets before I was approached by Formula 1 management, who were busy expanding the official F1 website and needed a new editor.

I’d been an F1 fan all my life – when I was a kid, I used to get up at all hours to watch the races via the military TV broadcast we got in the Falklands – so the job was a bit of a dream come true. The covid pandemic hit just weeks after I started, so travelling to races was severely curtailed, but nevertheless it was great fun and as a life-long fan, it was amazing to be able to peer behind the curtain of the sport.

Looking back to when I was a young boy tuning into the races on my little telly in our house here in the Falklands, I never for a minute imagined I’d one day be working in the paddock and make my living writing about the sport. 

What took you back to the Falklands?

I’d left the Falklands in 2007 to pursue my career, but not because I wasn’t happy living here. It was a big wrench to leave. I always kept in touch with my friends here and visited every few years when I could afford it (the flight is not cheap!) – and there was always a part of me that wanted to come home. 

My work prevented that for many years, but in late 2021, a good friend of mine was getting married in the Falklands. Despite the thrill of working in F1, by then I was ready for a bit of a change, so I decided to come home for the wedding and planned to stay for three months to enjoy the summer here. That was three years ago…

Around 2,500 people live in Stanley (Jeremy Richards/Dreamstime)

In truth, soon after coming back, I realised I just didn’t want to return to London. I was having a great time here, living among old friends, and the pull of home was too strong to resist this time. I was very lucky in that I was able to continue working in F1 remotely from here.

People are surprised to hear my social life is much busier here in Stanley – a town with about two and a half thousand residents – than it was in London, but it’s true. 

I love London and I loved living there, but I’ve always felt the Falklands is my home and it feels great to be back.

Tell us about Whiteout.

Whiteout is my first novel. It tells the story of Rachael Beckett, a glaciologist who has left her husband and daughter to join an urgent research trip to a remote field station deep in the Antarctic. But after losing all communication with her crew at base camp, she’s trapped and alone, and running out of supplies. 

The only information she has about what’s gone so catastrophically wrong is an emergency radio broadcast playing on a loop: a nuclear war has broken out, and Rachael might be the last survivor on Earth. 

Whiteout is available on our online store (HarperCollins)

Abandoned and starving, all she has left is a fierce determination to stay alive in the extreme cold and perpetual darkness of the polar winter. The research she’s gathered about catastrophic climate damage means she holds the fate of the continent and the world in her grasp…if there’s even a world left to save. 

Struggling with loneliness and grief over the unknown fate of her family back home, Rachael knows both her life and her sanity balance on a knife-edge. As she battles to stay alive in unimaginable conditions, she soon discovers she’s not completely alone in the dark and cold–but she might wish she was…

How did you come up with the premise?

I’d attempted several novels – without success – before I had the idea for this one. The concept for it came to me one afternoon when I found an article on the BBC website about the actual radio broadcast that would have been used in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK (the text had recently been declassified).

I started wondering what it would be like to hear those words, especially if you were already isolated and cut off from the rest of civilisation. 

Rob at his book launch at the Falkland Islands Jetty Visitor Centre (Rob Burnett)

I’d always thought the Antarctic would be the perfect setting for a thriller – the extreme conditions, the vast landscape, the sparse population – so I put the two ideas together, and Whiteout was born.

One of the things I’m most pleased about is that I got permission from the BBC to use the actual text of that nuclear attack broadcast in the book, and the first chapter opens with the full transcript.

Have you visited Antarctica? How did you do your research? 

I’m sad to say that I haven’t yet visited Antarctica. Living in the Falklands means I know plenty of people who have lived and worked there, and in fact, my brother used to work on the RRS Bransfield – a BAS support ship – many years ago. 

So, without that personal knowledge, I simply read as much as I could about the place. I went back to the days of Scott with Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World – the very definition of a harrowing read – and scoured social media for videos, blogs, diaries and reports from people living there now. 

There’s tons of info out there, so I immersed myself in that world as much as I could, but I know I will have got things wrong, so to those people who know better than me, I apologise!

Do you still have a dream destination you haven't visited?

There are so many places in the world I haven’t been to. I’d love to visit the Antarctic, of course – and for some reason, Deception Island has always fascinated me. The geography of the island is interesting, and it has a lot of human history too. Plus, there’s the name – it just sounds so spooky and mysterious!

What's next for you?

Two years ago, I bought an old house here in Stanley and I’ve just had it completely gutted and renovated, so I’d like to relax and enjoy it for a while (it feels very luxurious now I’ve had central heating installed!).

But as well as my day job covering F1 (and sometimes night job, depending on where the latest Grand Prix is being held), I’ve got a second novel in the works, which is due to be published in February 2026.

It’s not a direct follow-on to my first book, but it does share some similarities – and it is set in Antarctica, though in a very different place to Whiteout. 

At the moment, my focus is all on that as the deadline is fast approaching…!

What luxury item would you take if you were working at Port Lockroy for the season?

OK, so I thought about this a lot, and I think I’ve got the answer. As a youngster, I always asked my parents for Lego sets for every Christmas and birthday. I loved it then, and I’m afraid to say I still love Lego now. There’s something relaxing and therapeutic about snapping the pieces together and watching the creation come together before you.

So if there’s room in my luggage, I’d take one of those massive new sets, perhaps of a Formula 1 car or something similar. That should keep me busy for a few nights when there are no customers at the post office.

Finally, what’s your favourite species of penguin?

No thinking required for this one. We have five species of penguin here in the Falklands: kings, gentoos, macaronis, Magellanic (known locally as jackass penguins thanks to their donkey-like bray) and rockhoppers.

Rockhopper penguins in the Falklands (Ondrej Prosicky/Dreamstime)

And in my book, the "rockies" are best. They’re so small and cute, yet the way they hurl themselves up out of the sea onto cliff faces that would smash a human apart in seconds, before hopping up a seemingly impossible climb to their nests, makes them the unlikely badasses of the penguin world. Plus, they look like punk rockers.

Whiteout is out now and available on the UKAHT online shop.