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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... staying with him in the fort , though I would sooner have stayed in my own camp , finding it difficult after months in a tent to sleep in a small , hot room . Bernard wirelessed the Governor for permission for me to cross from Dikil to ...
... staying with them . He was a different type from Newbold , and I always felt he was principally concerned with the ... stayed for two days , and on the second the Sudanese staff invited them to a tea party , presided over by the qadi ...
... stayed with my mother who was now living in the sunny , top - storey flat in Chelsea which thirty years later became mine , with a view over the Physick Garden and away up the river . Her second husband , Reggie Astley , had died at The ...
Contents
List of Maps | 7 |
Introduction | 15 |
Arrival in Addis Ababa | 23 |
Copyright | |
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