Background

Wilfred Thesiger was born on June 3, 1910, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He was the son of a British minister, Wilfred Gilbert Thesiger, stationed abroad, and Kathleen Mary Vigors. He spent his early years in Ethiopia, what was then Abyssinia, and India. Thesiger's family returned to the United Kingdom in 1919.

Education

Wilfred Thesiger studied at a boarding school in Ethiopia. Later he attended Saint Aubyn's School in Rottingdean, Eton College, and completed a master's degree at Magdalen College in Oxford.

Career

In 1930 Wilfred Thesiger attend Haile Selassie's coronation and joined the Order of the Star of Ethiopia. Then, in 1933, he returned to warmer climes to mount an expedition to find out where the Awash River ended its course. This first effort was unsuccessful, but a second expedition led Thesiger to find out that the river eventually drained into Abhebad Lake.

From 1935 until 1940, Thesiger served in the Sudan Political Service. During that time, he learned Arabic and the culture of Arabic tribes, gaining a great love and appreciation for the beauty of the desert and its people. When World War II began, he served in the Sudan Defense Force, fought on the Ethiopian frontier, North Africa, and Syria. Besides, Thesiger was a political adviser to Crown Prince Amha Selassie of Ethiopia from 1943 to 1945 and worked with the Special Operations Executive in Syria and the Special Air Service during the North African Campaign. He earned the rank of major. With the war over, Thesiger returned to his traveling ways, mounting expeditions across the barren Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia by camel and in the 1950s, living with Madan Arabs in Iraq, where he gathered rare plant species for the British Museum.

Additionally, Wilfred Thesiger was a writer. His travels took him to Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Pakistan, and Kenya. In Kenya, he lived with Samburu tribespeople, who adopted him into one of their families. Thesiger spent much of the rest of his life in Kenya. He moved back to the United Kingdom only in 1995. Thesiger's extraordinary life and travels are captured in his books, which include Arabian Sands, The Marsh Arabs, Desert, Marsh and Mountain, The Life of My Choice, Visions of a Nomad, My Kenya Days, The Danakil Diary, Among the Mountains, Crossing the Sands, A Vanished World, and My Life and Travels.

Achievements

• Wilfred Thesiger was well known as an explorer and writer. He also was the holder of the Order of the Star of Ethiopia in 1930, the Distinguished Service Order in 1941, the Founder's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1948, the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs in 1955, the Livingstone Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1962, the W. H. Heinemann Award in 1964, and the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature in 1965. Moreover, Thesiger earned the Burton Memorial Medal from the Royal Asiatic Society in 1966, an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Leicester in 1967, and the University of Bath in 1992. He also became Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1968, Fellow Royal Society of Literature and Honorary Fellow British Academy in 1982, a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1995, and the recipient by Abu Dhabi Awards in 2008 posthumously.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Marsh Arabs

    (In this account of his time there, Wilfred Thesiger pays ...)

    1964
  • Arabian Sands

    (Wilfred Thesiger' set out to explore the deserts of Arabi...)

    1959
  • The Danakil Diary

    (Interspersed with letters to his mother, Thesiger's diary...)

    1996
  • Life Of My Choice

    (In this autobiography, Wilfred Thesiger highlights the pe...)

    1987
  • My Life and Travels

    (A collection of Thesiger's finest writing, selected from ...)

    2002
  • Desert, Marsh and Mountain 1979
  • Visions of a Nomad 1987
  • My Kenya Days 1994
  • Among the Mountains 1998
  • Crossing the Sands 1999
  • A Vanished World 2001

Connections

Father:

Wilfred Gilbert Thesiger

Wilfred Gilbert Thesiger was a British minister in Ethiopia, officer, and diplomat.

Mother:

Kathleen Mary Vigors

colleague:

Amha Selassie

Amha Selassie was the last emperor of Ethiopia.

Brother:

Brian Peirson Doughty-Wylie

Brother:

Dermot Vigors Thesiger

Brother:

Roderic Miles Doughty Thesiger

References

• Thesiger
  1994