An insight into so many lost worlds, incl England's
Disadvantages:
You may not like the man
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Travel books are intended to make you want to go there and do that. The best ones also make you want to meet the person who already has. Ten years ago when I read "The Marsh Arabs" I fell in thrall to Wilfred Thesiger. I wanted not so much to meet him, as to be him. This was a man who had done things I could only dream of doing.
Gifted therefore with the chance to read how he came to do them, how could I resist?
For those who have never come across the name, Wilfred Thesiger is the last of the Victorian explorers. Post-Thesiger you get into the world of Fiennes and Piccard, of grants and funded expeditions and modern communications…you get into a world that is much smaller, and much changed, for all the hardships they may still endure.
Thesiger is very much old-school. In every sense. As you read his life story, this has the dual effect of endearing him to you, and removing him from you. In some ways it makes his accomplishments much less 'surprising' or 'extraordinary' because it underlines what he has that you do not.
Connections.
He was born in 1910 in the British Legation in Addis Ababa, where his father was British Minister in Charge, not quite an ambassador, but as near as would make no odds. He was subsequently educated in England at St Aubyn's, Eton & Oxford. His father died when he was ten years old leaving his mother utterly desolate, without a home and short of money. So short of money that she could put four boys through Eton and Oxford and live in a glorious house (The Milebrook) on the borders of Radnorshire & Gloucestershire.
Perhaps by the circles they moved in, they were poor. These things are clearly relative.
For the record, those circles included a great grandfather (Lord Chelmsford) who had been Lord Chancellor, a grandfather (Colonel Lord Chelmsford) who after an illustrious military career was ADC to Queen Victoria & Lieutenant of the Tower of London. His father's generation included in the family "a viceroy, a general, an admiral, a Lord of Appeal, a High Court Judge, and a famous actor". Ras Tafari (later Emperor Haile Selassie) was a dear family friend. In that milieu one suspects that being "short of money" does not entail queuing in grubby offices and cashing giros.
Upon leaving Oxford, needing a job, and desperate to get back to the Africa of his childhood Thesiger joined the Sudan Political Service, on whose behalf (& on his own) he spent the next five years travelling the unknown quarters of Sudan, Libya & the (then) French Sahara. During the war he got back to his beloved Abyssinia, later serving with the SOE in Syria and the newly formed SAS in the Western Desert. Thereafter he worked as a political advisor to a crown prince and on a locust monitoring programme ~ anything which would get him to those desolate places that he loved so much.
Obviously it is technically incorrect to call Thesiger a Victorian, since the Windsors were already on the throne in the year of his birth, but in resilience, ingenuity, integrity and "attitude" (both positive & negative) he is pure eccentric Victorian explorer. He fell in love with the idea of the life of adventure through reading the tales of H Rider Haggard and T E Lawrence; he read every book he could lay hands on "about the Zulus, about Abyssinia and about the rise and fall of the Dervish empire in the Sudan"; he read the diaries of the great African hunters against a backdrop of the sounds and smells of that very continent; as a child he had witnessed Ras Tafari return from hand-fought wars and parade his thousands of prisoners in chains. It is no wonder that he had, as he owns, "a romantic rather than an objective conception of history".
What he also had, however, was a warm heart and an open mind. He wanted to explore the unknown places, but it comes over strongly throughout that for him this was not just about seeing places that no European had ever seen (though that lure he freely admits), it was in the event about meeting the people who lived there, reaching tentatively into a way of existence that was ancient and that, as he must have known even in the 1930s-1950s & was certainly clear by the time he penned this memoir, was doomed.
From reading the earlier book I knew that Thesiger is no apologist. He did all the things he did for his own reasons, and to him they suffice. When challenged, for example, about his evident excitement on the big game hunts, the joy of the kill, he scarcely bothers to explain: "I believe that most men have an inborn desire to hunt and kill…Nowadays many people condemn big game hunting and rightly so with the wildlife they watch on television being threatened with extinction. Fifty years ago, this was not the case; there was no apparent threat…" Perhaps the operative word is 'apparent'. That these people, who shot obscene numbers of animals for the sport of it, could not see the threat. "Big game" are long-lived animals, they reproduce slowly. Taking them out threatens the species. Thesiger talks of growing up with a longing to hunt big game, of taking every opportunity to do so, and of having no regrets.
That he does not regret is one of the few things I must hold against him. That it was the done thing, especially in the environment in which he was brought up is a given, that for an ascetic man with a taste for adventure it was a surpassing experience is understandable…but to look back from the standpoint of the late 1980s and still not see cause for regret smacks of the kind of selfishness, self-righteousness we automatically assume 'goes with the territory', and that's a shame.
A shame, because in most other respects what comes over of Thesiger is that he is a warm, curious human being, with deep respect for other viewpoints and lifestyles. He also comes over as having a much deeper sense of humour than I'd previously credited him with. Like Lawrence before him, he does not hide his own shortcomings: his mediocre academic aptitudes (not good at getting into Eton), his fear of making a parachute jump even in training (not good for someone who's just wangled his way into the SAS), his difficulties with Arabic (not good generally given his later vocation). He speaks of his fears as candidly as he does his exhilarations and seeks to justify neither. This, he says, is simply how it was.
WHY READ IT?
If you've read any of Thesiger's earlier works, you will know why. He has an insight into the ways and whys of simple, unknown cultures that no-one else can give you. When he travels it is by camel, or mule, or on foot. He accepts the local customs and the local rites. He eats their food. He can see beauty. His descriptions of deserts that are anything but desolate are unmatched. He will tell tales of war, and war-mongerers, but pause to look at a flower or a sunset. He will introduce you, not just to "peoples" but to people. Individuals. Characters. Some he loathed, some he clearly loved, all were of their time and place. He can look at the human form and dispassionately describe its grace, its strength. Likewise he can look into a human mind and discern its power and its weakness. He will take you into humble homes and palaces, escort you to feasts, and stand by you in the dark nights of being lost and hungry.
If you haven't come across him before, then where do I start? All of the above, plus Insights into the upbringing of the privileged in the interwar years ~ I especially loved his descriptions of Eton, not just the beatings and the faggings, but the damp and the cold and the simple logic ("it hurts"… "it's meant to") The history of Abyssinia ~ it is clear throughout that the author has a deep affection for his place of birth and wants us to understand how it came to be where it is. For me this is possibly one of the great strengths of the book, not because of what it has taught me, which is much, but because it has inspired me to want to learn more of how Ethiopia arrived at its current pitiful position. Interspersed with his own tale, and that of Haile Selassie for whom he has a deep and abiding respect, there are long passages on the history of the area. Much of this is not easy to take in, in a first reading, but I'm sure will reward further concentration and onward exploration. The progress of the Second World War as it was played out in Africa. Most of us have heard of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, we know of the Desert Rats, and Rommel. We may know about the threat to Egypt, what happened in Libya and how Israel came to be. Still there is interest to be found in the individual campaigns ~ in individuals' involvement in such campaigns. That Thesiger should take his detachment to sit up on the ledges of the hill, because he'd read that it worked for Lawrence. The founding of the SAS. In a few short pages we meet David Stirling and learn how a legend was born…and we share a few of the early expeditions. The telling of them lures you in to that 'boys own' world inhabited by Thesiger, and it is sometimes hard to remember that these are brutal and bloody attacks, where people died, not necessarily very quickly The workings of the higher echelons of the military. While squaddies were being sent to fight & die wherever the conflict demanded, there was an upper class who, albeit at risk of charges of subordination, or threat of courts martial, could virtually choose where they served and under whom. Insights too into some of the legendary figures and, for instance in the comparisons between Wingate (of Chindits fame) & Stirling (SAS), inklings of the differences between leadership and command (the one inspired, the other inflicted).
WHAT IT DOESN'T DO
The book has one potential weakness for those unfamiliar with the author. It is heavily biased to the early years of the explorer's life. The post-war years are relegated to the final 50 pages. This does mean that if you haven't already, you will have to seek out his later travels in other editions. Most, if not all, are still in print and readily available in paperback.
AND HAVING READ IT?
I will go back to the earlier works, the Marsh Arabs, Arabian Sands, Desert Marsh Mountain…and read them in a different light. More than that I will come back and read this one again. Above all I will seek out more of the history of those places, and if I'm very lucky I may get to see what is left of them.
My view of Thesiger himself has been deepened by this interlude, but he survives. He retains my respect; I still think that had I met him I would have been entranced.
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Wilfred Thesiger died in August 2003. Input his name into any search engine & you will bring up obituaries and commentary on what others made of the man. Read this book & you will understand what he made of himself.
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Published in paperback by Flamingo pp 444 plus photographs, maps, glossary & index Cover price £10.99 ISBN 0-00-637267-8
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