Wilfred Thesiger

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 late British explorer and travel writer recounts his travels in the "Empty Quarter" of Arabia between 1945 and 1950, and describes the vanishing way of life of the Bedouins. Reissue. 10,000 first printing.

In a study of the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, a noted British travel writer and explorer describes a way of life that lasted for thousands of years, until they were almost completely destroyed by Saddam Hussein, evoking the landscape and its teeming wildlife, profiling the many friends he made among the Marsh Arabs, and providing a record of the last remnants of a people and their culture. Original.

An anthology of travel writing one of the 20th century's greatest living explorers and enduring travel writers. The text contains extracts from the eight books Thesiger published between 1959 and 1998, most notably "Arabian Sands", "Marsh Arabs" and "The Life of My Choice".

Wilfred Thesiger, this centuryâ??s greatest living explorer, recalls his travels among the mountain ranges of Asia.

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.

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.

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. An explorer of some of the most inaccessible places on earth. Other books by him include "Arabian Sands" and "The Marsh Arabs".

The desert-dwelling Bedouin have always been a subject of intense fascination. Their culture and ethics are still largely a mystery, both for the peoples with whom they share the Middle-Eastern and African lands, and for those living in the West. Like other non-literate peoples, the Bedouin have a strong oral tradition and use poetry for many forms of communication and entertainment. Clinton Bailey has spent the last twenty years among the Bedouin of Sinai and the Negev studying their culture and recording their poems as recited around campfires. This book presents the fruit of his work: 113 poems reflecting Bedouin attitudes to a variety of personal, social, and political experiences. Each poem is translated into English, appears in Arabic script and transliteration, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes on the cultural, linguistic, and historical background. This thorough and original study makes a vital contribution to our knowledge of the Bedouin, and will be of great interest to Arabists, anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and all those who visit this part of the Arab world. Dr Bailey has has lectured on Bedouin culture and history at various universities, and is a founder of the Museum of Bedouin Culture in the Negev.