Thesiger [Paperback]

Michael Asher's meticulous biography of the last great romantic adventurer-explorer in the nineteenth century tradition, Wilfred Thesiger, does justice to author and subject alike. Much of the detail of Thesiger's epic journeys was drawn from extended conversations with the explorer himself while he was living in retirement among the Samburu tribe in Kenya, as well as from some of those who accompanied him on his majestic desert treks. Asher also made pilgrimages to the wilderness areas crossed by Thesiger and his small bands of local companions to try and understand and to convey the motivations behind this most complex, contradictory and anachronistic of twentieth century men. For the uninitiated, Wilfred Thesiger was (he died recently) an autocratic and patrician English traditionalist born in a diplomatic mission in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and nurtured on the playing fields of Eton and the cloisters of Oxford University. As a young man he was the first European to explore Abyssinia's Danakil region inhabited by the murderous Afar tribesman. Later, as an administrator in the Sudan Political service in Darfur Province he took the opportunity to hunt big game, his greatest passion, and to explore the region of the Nuer in the south of that country, the Tibesti Mountains in the Sahara, and Syria, before war broke out. This was the opportunity to kick the Italians out of Abyssinia that he had been dying for. He then went on to fight in the western desert with the SAS.
After the war he became one of the first Europeans to cross Arabia's Empty Quarter on camel and by foot with a small band of young Bedu tribesman. This was his greatest achievement and out of this expedition came `Arabian Sands', maybe the definitive twentieth century travel book. He endeared himself to his companions by living, sleeping and eating as they did and proved their equal in endurance and bravery. His acceptance by them and what he saw as the unrivalled generosity of spirit, courage, chivalry and nobility of the Bedu represented all that he believed in, and admired, about human beings. Eschewing all worldly goods and technological aids, and often close to starvation as they travelled, these ascetic values were the link between Arab tribesman and the harsh, Spartan regimes of the English public school. His experience in Arabia was to encapsulate his whole being and he seemed to spend the rest of his life bemoaning technological progress and advancement and the deleterious effect that he believed that they were having on traditional cultures. An arch-conservative product of Empire he believed profoundly in ancient traditions and their perceived (by him) immutability, and harboured a vitriolic hatred of democracy, mass education, equal opportunities and human rights. America to him was truly the Great Satan imposing its egalitarian philosophy and culture on those who would be (in his mind) better off without it. Of course, the ironies, paradoxes and contradictions in Thesiger's beliefs are all discussed and dissected by Asher and it makes extremely interesting and thought-provoking reading. There is the minimum of speculation and the subject's attraction to handsome adolescents is not given undue weight as Thesiger plainly was a celibate rather than a sexual predator.
After his Arabian adventure he was to be accepted among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq - where he spent eight years - by killing hundreds of ferocious wild boars, and by carrying out almost as many circumcisions of young men. In addition he crossed Kurdistan, the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan among others.
All throughout his life he had been going back to England and travelling around Europe and further afield with his sprightly mother. He was always able to escape the hardship and privation of desert life that were endured with such nobility by his beloved Bedu. He loved and was proud of the privileges afforded him by his elite background, another contradiction much reflected on in the book. The book ends with Thesiger living among the Samburu people of Kenya, the selected people around him routinely and cruelly depriving him of `hundreds of thousands of pounds'. Yet he was so desperate for company that he considered this fleecing almost as an occupational hazard, though, in fact, he ended his days in a Surrey nursing home. A terrific insight into the mentality of the British Empire and its patrician ruling class, and the sad decline into irascibility and loneliness of an individual who dreamed the romantic dream but allowed it to impinge on and finally to supplant reality.

Arrived promptly. Book was allegedly second hand- looks new to me. Am enjoying it. Much more readable than Theseigers own autobiography