WILFRED THESIGER: THE LIFE OF THE GREAT EXPLORER

the long version

"A legend in his own lifetime (1910-2003), the explorer and traveller Wilfred Thesiger journeyed for sixty years in some of the remotest, most dangerous places on earth. His books, including Arabian Sands, The Marsh Arabs and The Life of My Choice, are widely acclaimed, yet - evocative though these are - his character and motivations have remained to this day an intriguing enigma." "Now his close friend and literary executor, Alexander Maitland, who has had exclusive access to letters, diaries and manuscripts containing a wealth of previously unpublished information, sheds new light on almost every aspect of Thesiger's life and travels. Maitland's biography re-examines Thesiger's influential, blissfully happy upbringing in Addis Ababa; his harsh experiences at a preparatory school; his years at Eton, when he first met the future Abyssinian emperor, Haile Selassie, whose coronation he later attended; and his idealised memories of Oxford." "Thesiger's letters and diaries offer fresh insights into his 1933-34 Danakil expedition, his earliest desert travels and thrilling lion hunts in the Sudan. Others contain often dramatic, emotional descriptions of Thesiger's wartime service in Abyssinia under Orde Wingate, in Syria with SOE and with the SAS in North Africa. Maitland explores the background to Thesiger's Arabian journeys, his sojourns in the Iraqi Marshes and his travels among the mountains of western Asia, as well as his relationships with tribesmen from many lands, his sexuality, his loyal and sometimes turbulent friendships and his precious relationship with his mother, whom he adored and upon whose devoted encouragement and support he could always depend." "Authentic and revealing, Maitland's biography of Thesiger separates the man from the myth. It shows him to be compassionate, determined, egocentric, fiercely resilient, yet surprisingly vulnerable, an engaging personality made complex by a mass of often extreme contradictions."--BOOK JACKET.