The Life of My Choice

Front Cover
Collins, 1987 - Biography & Autobiography - 459 pages

Wilfred 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."

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

"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."

E.S. TURNER, 'London Review of Books'

"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."

GEOFFREY MOORHOUSE, 'Daily Telegraph'

From inside the book

Contents

List of Maps
7
Introduction
15
Arrival in Addis Ababa
23
Copyright

25 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1987)

Wilfred Thesiger was born in 1910 in Ethiopia. From 1930 Thesiger travelled through remote areas of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. His journeys and his books have won him numerous prestigious awards over the years. In 1968 he was made a CBE; he was honoured with a KBE in 1995.

Bibliographic information