Wilfred Thesiger – författare

Following on from the author's autobiography, "The Life of My Choice", this book provides a record of Thesiger's 30 years in Kenya. Since his first visit to Kenya in 1960, Thesiger has made a series of long journeys on foot with camels to Lake Turkana, Marsabit and other remote areas. Drawn by the lure of what was formerly Kenya's Nothern Frontier District, with its varied wildlife and distinctive nomadic tribes, Thesiger spent many years as an Honorary Game Warden leading anti-poaching patrols. He describes Kenya's northern tribes - Rendille warriors dancing by moolight, Turkana in pursuit of buffalo and an account of Samburu moran during their initiation ceremonies.

Wilfred Thesiger, this century’s greatest living explorer, recalls his travels among the mountain ranges of Asia.Although Wilfred Thesiger is still largely associated with the Arabian deserts and the Marshes of Iraq, he has also travelled extensively at intervals, over the years, among mountains and mountain people in other remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.In 1987 Thesiger wrote: ‘I have always been attracted by mountains…’ And he observed more recently: ‘Had I done nothing else as a traveller except my journeys in Nuristan, these alone would have amounted to something worthwhile’.Eventful, interesting and remarkable achievements in their own right, the Asian journeys – among the Hindu Kush, the Karakorams and the Pamirs – have inspired many of the finest photographs Thesiger has ever taken and contribute significantly to his standing as a great traveller and explorer.Spanning a period of over 30 years (1951-1983) this book draws on Thesiger’s original diaries of his various journeys and his vivid memories of them, and includes some 80 or so previously unpublished photographs of the stunning mountain scenery he saw and the people he encountered.

Wilfred Thesiger is the last of the great British eccentric explorers, renowned for his travels through some of the most inaccessible places on earth. As a child in Abyssinia he watched the glorious armies of Ras Tafari returning from hand-to-hand battle, their prisoners in chains; at the age of 23 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 books, "Arabian Sands" and "The Marsh Arabs", tell of his two sojourns in the Empty Quarter and the Marshes of Southern Iraq. In this autobiography, Wilfred Thesiger highlights the people who most profoundly influenced him and the events which enabled him to lead the life of his choice.

The earliest and most influential expeditions of the man now considered to be the greatest living explorer.The Danakil Diary is the account of two journeys Thesiger made into the Danakil country in Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, in 1930-34 at the age of 24 – which, today, he still regards as the most dangerous he undertook.It was an extraordinary journey and a remarkable achievement. Thesiger succeeded in penetrating country that had wiped out two Italian expeditions and an Egyptian army before him, discovered what happened to the Awash River (one of the area’s last geographical mysteries to be solved) and managed to survive amongst the Danakil tribesmen, to whom a man’s status depended on the number of men he had killed and castrated.Besides giving early proof of Thesiger’s descriptive genius – with his portrayal of the beautiful, savage landscapes, and their varied wildlife – The Danakil Diary reveals youthful evidence of his fierce motivation and uncompromising will, which are familiar hallmarks of his sixty years of travel among primitive peoples in some of the harshest and remotest areas of the world.

This is a collection of Wilfred Thesiger's greatest journeys - in the Empty Quarter of Arabia, the marshes of Iraq, the mountains of the Hindu Kush and Kurdistan, and the Yemen - illustrated with Thesiger's own photographs.

An anthology of writings and photographs celebrating the outstanding contribution of one of the country’s most distinguished and enduring travel writers, and the century’s greatest living explorer.At the age of twenty-three, three years after attending the coronation of Haile Selassie, Thesiger made his first expedition into the country of the murderous Danakil tribe. Since then he has traversed the Empty Quarter twice, spending five years among the Bedu, followed by several years living as no Westerner had in the strange world of the Marshmen of Iraq.Later he made many mountain journeys in the awesome ranges of the Karakorams, the Hindu Kush, Ladakh and Chitral. After these varied and often dangerous adventures among fast-disappearing cultures, Thesiger settled down to spend over twenty years living mostly among the pastoral Samburu in Northern Kenya, until 1994 when he finally returned to England permanently.These experiences have, over the years, provided rich material for writings which express a romantic but austere vision, and for exquisite photographs which capture the spirit of a bygone era. This book contains extracts from the eight books Thesiger published to great acclaim between 1959 and 1998, most notably ‘Arabian Sands’, ‘Marsh Arabs’ and ‘The Life of My Choice’.

In the spirit of T.E. Lawrence, Wilfred Thesiger spent five years wandering the deserts of Arabia, producing Arabian Sands, 'a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people'. The Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Rory Stewart.Wilfred Thesiger, repulsed by what he saw as the softness and rigidity of Western life - 'the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets' - spent years exploring in and around the vast, waterless desert that is the 'Empty Quarter' of Arabia. Travelling amongst the Bedu people, he experienced their everyday challenges of hunger and thirst, the trials of long marches beneath the relentless sun, the bitterly cold nights and the constant danger of death if it was discovered he was a Christian 'infidel'. He was the first European to visit most of the region, and just before he left the area the process that would change it forever had begun - the discovery of oil.This edition contains an introduction by Rory Stewart discussing the dangers of Thesiger's travels, his unconventional personality and his insights into the Bedouin way of life.Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger (1910-2003) was a British travel writer born in Addis Ababa in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Thesiger is best known for two travel books: Arabian Sands (1959), which recounts his travels in the Empty Quarter of Arabia between 1945 and 1950 and describes the vanishing way of life of the Bedouins, and The Marsh Arabs (1964), an account of the traditional peoples who lived in the marshlands of southern Iraq.If you enjoyed Arabian Sands, you might like T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, also available in Penguin Modern Classics'Thesiger is perhaps the last, and certainly one of the greatest, of the British travellers among the Arabs'Sunday Times'Following worthily in the tradition of Burton, Lawrence, Philby and Thomas, it is, very likely, the book about Arabia to end all books about Arabia'Daily Telegraph

During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Travelling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicines and treating the sick. In this account of his time there he pays tribute to the hospitality, loyalty, courage and endurance of the people, describes their impressive reed houses, the waterways and lakes teeming with wildlife, the herding of buffalo and hunting of wild boar, moments of tragedy and moments of pure comedy, all in vivid, engaging detail.Untouched by the modern world until recently, these independent people, their way of life and their surroundings have suffered widespread destruction under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Wilfred Thesiger's magnificent account of his time spent among them is a moving testament to their now threatened culture and the landscape they inhabit.