The Life of My ChoiceWilfred Thesiger is the last of the great British eccentric explorers, a legendary figure, renowned for his travels through some of the most inaccessible places on earth. As a child in Abyssinia he watched the victorious armies of Ras Tafari returning from hand-to-hand battle, their prisoners in chains; at the age of twenty-three he made his first expedition into the country of the Danakil, a murderous race among whom a man's status in the tribe depended on the number of men he had killed and castrated. His widely acclaimed books, 'Arabian Sands' and 'The Marsh Arabs' tell of his two famous sojourns in the Empty Quarter and the Marshes of southern Iraq. But Thesiger's true character and motives have until now remained an enigma. In this, his autobiography, he highlights the people who most profoundly influenced him and the events which enabled him to lead the life of his choice. "One of the very few people who in our time could be put on the pedestal of the great explorers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." "A treasure galleon built to the same specifications as 'Arabian Sands' and 'The Marsh Arabs' ... it is the record of a man magnificently and unabashedly out of step with his times." "He is, unquestionably, one of the greatest travellers the British have ever produced, the last of our recognizable primitives. He also writes with much distinction and honesty." |
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... Cairo , a great eastern city . Minarets , domes of mosques and tombs , roofs of caravanserais , remnants of massive walls and arched gateways rose above a patchwork of flat , earthen roof - tops , courts and alleys . In the clear air ...
... Cairo when I arrived there , so I spent the three days with them . I had not seen them since I left Addis Ababa for the Danakil country . Since then so much had happened . In 1935 Haile Selassie had appointed Sandford Advisor to his ...
... Cairo because I was to join Glubb Pasha's Arab Legion in Trans - Jordan . This meant that I had to catch a ship at Massawa , so there I went by way of Asmara in a civilian car which I commandeered , driven by an Italian . We passed ...
Contents
List of Maps | 7 |
Introduction | 15 |
Arrival in Addis Ababa | 23 |
Copyright | |
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