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." |
From inside the book
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... Haile Selassie would play in the liberation of Abyssinia . He answered , ' Haile Selassie will enter Abyssinia by the grace of William Platt , and with his baggage . ' Finally , Haile Selassie appealed to Churchill . As a result , Eden ...
... Haile Selassie feasted while his people starved , but actually the banquet he photo- graphed was on the occasion of a State Visit by the President of the Sudan . Dimbleby's television programme caused much loss of sympathy with Haile ...
Wilfred Thesiger. Haile Selassie was collected from his palace by two officers , and taken in a Volkswagen to the Menelik gibbi , where he was accom- modated in a mud hut . As he left his palace , he remarked to one of the officers ...
Contents
List of Maps | 7 |
Introduction | 15 |
Arrival in Addis Ababa | 23 |
Copyright | |
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