This long-awaited official biography is something of a disappointment, being perhaps overly respectful of its subject, and offering little new. Alexander Maitland had special access to Thesiger, and to his private papers, and could have made more of this.
As a general overview of the great man's life it is excellent, covering all his travels from birth in Abyssinia to death in Surrey, and such a remarkable story cannot help but be a good read. But this really is as far as the book goes.
Maitland fills in too much space with extracts from Thesiger's published writing, which serves little purpose but to bulk up his word count. He was the first writer with access to the intensely personal letters between Thesiger and his mother. These are absolutely remarkable, and yet he does not give enough focus or assessment to this relationship. And elsewhere he only dabbles in any real assessment of Thesiger. He touches only lightly on the psychological reasons for the life of travels; on Thesiger's frequent hypocrisy; his chauvinism, and of course, his sexuality. With a couple of passing lines Maitland strongly suggests that Thesiger was not, as has often been claimed "asexual", and yet he does not elaborate on what this really means - who then, if he was not asexual, did Thesiger sleep with? Even the least salaciously-minded reader cannot help but be frustrated by this. On this and other matters, time and again Maitland manages a few brief, and slightly uncomfortable lines, before veering away once more into the safety of exactly where Thesiger went in spring 1962 or whatever.
The book is strongest in its final chapters, detailing Thesiger's old age and decline. This is almost unbearably poignant. The image of the last great explorer, a man who crossed the empty quarter twice with Bedu tribesmen slowly fading away amid over-cooked vegetables and bingo nights in an English nursing home cannot help but bring a lump to the throat, and the thought of the woefully frail old man calling out to some dim shadow at the side of his deathbed "What is your tribe?" likewise.
But overall I have to say that Michael Asher's 1995 biography, Thesiger, is a far stronger, deeper book, with a good deal more insight into this remarkable man. Were it to be reissued with a new final chapter covering Thesiger's last years it would surely be the definitive treatment.
