Wilfred Thesiger, one of the 20th century's greatest living explorers, reveals the events and people that most influenced his travels through some of the most inaccessible places on earth.
As a child in Abyssinia he watched the victorious 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 depended on the number of men he had killed and castrated.
Thesiger's widely acclaimed books, 'Arabian Sands' and 'The Marsh Arabs', tell of his two famous sojourns in the Empty Quarter and the marshes of southern Iraq. But his true character and motives have until now remained an enigma. In this, his autobiography, he shares some of the experiences that allowed him to live the life of his choice.
