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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... shot grouse , partridge , pheasant , occasional duck , snipe and woodcock and innumerable rabbits , more than earning whatever we shot by the amount of exercise we took to get it . Stanage had one of the country's finest pheasant shoots ...
... shot , espe- cially as there was dead ground between us . Then I saw them for a second as they topped a rise and disappeared . I went forward cautiously to where I had shot one lion , and as I did so one of the others broke back across ...
... shot , together with all who failed to surrender their weapons in twenty - four hours . He also ordered Badoglio to ... shot . Among those shot were Ras Kassa's three eldest sons . On 8 June Mussolini authorized Graziani to use gas ' to ...
Contents
List of Maps | 7 |
Introduction | 15 |
Arrival in Addis Ababa | 23 |
Copyright | |
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