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.While Wilfred Thesiger’s own classic writings (including ‘The Marsh Arabs’, ‘Arabian Sands’, ‘Desert’, Marsh and Mountain’, ‘The Life of My Choice’ and ‘My Kenya Days’) comprehensively cover his classic journeys amongst the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq, or across the Empty Quarter in Arabia, they fail conspicuously to shed light on his character and motives, which have remained an enigma.Maitland’s biography had Thesiger’s support before he died in 2003, and has been written with full access, granted to no one else, to the rich Thesiger archive – vivid, intimate family correspondence, and his own letters, diaries and notebooks which are far more confiding than his scrupulously edited published accounts. Maitland investigates in depth Thesiger’s parents and family influences; his wartime experiences and the ethos of conflict; his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist; his development as a writer and photographer; his close friendships with the Arabs and Africans amongst whom he lived; and his sexuality. In all, this major biography of a great and unusual man will take its place on the shelf of outstanding lives of the great explorers.
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Chris Morton. Wilfred Thesiger in Africa
Contents
Chapter 1 Wilfred Thesiger in Africa ALEXANDER MAITLAND
Abyssinian impressions
The Afar (Danakil) and the Awash River
The Sudan
In defence of Abyssinia
Morocco
Winters in Morocco
Ethiopia revisited
Kenya
A home in Maralal
Thesiger’s African photography
Chapter 2 Heart of a Nomad: Wilfred Thesiger in Conversation with David Attenborough
Chapter 3 Wilfred Thesiger: Last of the Gentleman Travellers BENEDICT ALLEN
Chapter 4 Imagined Time: Thesiger, Photography and the Past ELIZABETH EDWARDS
Chapter 5 An Incidental Collection: Objects Donated by Wilfred Thesiger to the Pitt Rivers Museum JEREMY COOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chapter 6 Wilfred Thesiger’s Photograph Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum CHRISTOPHER MORTON AND SCHUYLER JONES
Christopher Morton, Curator of Photographs at the Pitt Rivers Museum, writes:
Chapter 7 Wilfred Thesiger’s Photographs of Africa: A Centenary Selection PHILIP N. GROVER AND CHRISTOPHER MORTON
NOTES
Bibliography of Works by Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003)
Index
Copyright
About the Publisher
Отрывок из книги
WILFRED THESIGER IN AFRICA
EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER MORTON
.....
For those days I lived with the Maidob as I love living, moving where we would, sleeping under the stars, at one moment gorged on meat, the next with nothing but some flour and water, with no barriers between us. We had one unforgettable night when we came across some shepherds and spent the night with them. Everyone so free and natural. They played to us on their pipes round the fire far into the night, lads each of whom looked like Pan.52
Among Thesiger’s most memorable experiences in the Sudan was a journey he made south-west from Jabal Maidob to the Anka wells. ‘I sat or slept on a rug on the ground,’ he wrote, ‘with my few possessions in my saddle-bags, and enjoyed that easy, informal comradeship that this life and our surroundings engendered. It was my first experience of the infinite space of the real desert, its silence and its windswept cleanness.’53
