Besides the official honours, Shackleton's Antarctic feats were greeted in Britain with great enthusiasm. Proposing a toast to the explorer at a lunch given in Shackleton's honour by the Royal Societies Club, Lord Halsbury, a former Lord Chancellor, said: "When one remembers what he had gone through, one does not believe in the supposed degeneration of the British race. One does not believe that we have lost all sense of admiration for courage endurance". The heroism was also claimed by Ireland: the Dublin "Evening Telegraph's" headline read "South Pole Almost Reached By An Irishman", while the "Dublin Express" spoke of the "qualities that were his heritage as an Irishman".