A unique collection of essays accompany Wilfred Thesiger’s own personal photographs of the Africa he experienced as one of the world’s most celebrated explorers.

Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, became a legend in his own lifetime. This authorised biography by a longstanding friend and associate delves into his little-known character and motivations, as well as recounting the details of his extraordinary life.

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.

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.

This book is a collection of photographs chosen by Thesiger which include images from his Asian travels, the Arab world and images of Africa.

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.

Arabian Sands is Wilfred Thesiger's record of his extraordinary journey through the parched "Empty Quarter" of Arabia. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life-"the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets." In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the deserts of Arabia, traveling among peoples who had never seen a European and considered it their duty to kill Christian infidels. His now-classic account is invaluable to understanding the modern Middle East.

"Wilfred Thesiger's superb portraits of tribal peoples have earned him worldwide recognition as a photographer. Using a simple box camera which had belonged to his father, Thesiger began his photographic career during a short hunting trip in Ethiopia in 1930 and used the same camera to photograph hostile Danakil tribesmen when he returned three years later to explore the Awash river. Whilst in the Sudan, and now equipped with a Leica 35mm, Thesiger portrayed the Muslim tribes in Northern Darfur, pagan Nuer in the Western Nile swamps and Nuba wrestlers. Among Ethiopia's Danakil he had travelled as a European accompanied by servants, but here he lived increasingly on equal terms with his followers and his photography mirrors this changed attitude. The dramatic visual impact of Arabia's deserts fully awakened Thesiger's latent talent for portraiture and composition. During his five years in Arabia from 1945-50 he was able to depict his Bedu companions with a sensitivity and power only suggested by his pre-war photographs. Conceived in the harshest of settings, these Arabian pictures bear eloquent testimony to the inspirational effect the desert had upon this great traveller. In contrast, tranquil images of reeds, waterways and lagoons characterize Thesiger's matchless portraits of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq -- in which he captures a world which has now completely disappeared. In the seldom visited regions of Kurdistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan Thesiger took many photographs of their striking inhabitants who remained thoroughly unselfconscious in front of the camera -- as did the graceful tribespeople of northern Kenya and Tanzania later in Thesiger's eventful life. These unique portraits were all taken under exceptional conditions. Together they provide a magnificent pictorial record of diverse cultures and vanished worlds"--Publisher description.

In 1979, the author of this work read Arabian Sands by W. Thesiger, which had an impact on his life and made him become a desert explorer. In tribute to Thesiger, he has written this biography of Thesigers motivations and achievements. A man of great paradoxes and contradictions, Thesiger revered traditional peoples, but retained at the same time a profound pride in his own race and background. He felt most intensely alive when living on the same level as his tribal companions, yet rejoiced in his ability to return to the civilized world. also follows in Thesinger's footsteps, interviewing many of his former travelling companions and throwing new light on the celebrated Arabian expeditions.