Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107205 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Review
'A model biography of the explorer!Maitland has meticulously separated reality from legend!here was such a remarkable personality, who did so many indisputably remarkable things, that the embroidery does not seem important.' Sunday Telegraph 'This book is a worthy testament to an exceptional life -- and as an authorised biography it is also the last cry of Thesiger himself, someone who evoked complete worlds of brutal majesty now denied the rest of us forever.' Independent on Sunday 'Masterly.' The Times 'In his long and extraordinary life Wilfred Thesiger was compared to the greatest travellers of the Victorian age!Maitland captures that strange attractiveness, his undoubted love and understanding of a now-vanished world.' Financial Times 'What makes Maitland's book so worthwhile are the letters which Thesiger wrote home to his devoted mother Kathleen.' The Spectator 'This thorough biography will be fascinating to Thesiger aficionados.' Mail on Sunday 'Maitland has done justice to an extraordinary subject.' Scotsman 'In this important biography of one of England's great legendary figures, Wilfred Thesiger's life and works are analysed in minute detail!(his life) was so full of interest and excitement!that it reads like an adventure story.' Country Life 'Meticulous research is illuminated by Maitland's evocations of the Thesiger's affinity with a world characterised by desert romance.' Sunday Telegraph

Evening Standard
'wonderful book...a convincing and eminently readable portrait of a complicated, highly idiosyncratic man'

Daily Mail
'...he whets your appetite for the books and photographs that are the invaluable legacy of a lifetime's courageous travelling'

Customer Reviews

A good overview, but a shortage of insight...
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.

A Fair Assessment
When the author is described as the subject's "close friend and literary executor", you expect a favourable interpretation, and this is. But it does not avoid the blemishes, notably Thesiger's churlishness in failing to acknowledge adequately the contributions of others to his expeditions, and his foolishness in his dealings with his companions in Kenya in the 80's and 90's. He avoids excessive travelogue detail - we can read Thesiger's own books for that - though I agree with the reviewer who feels that Maitland quotes large chunks of those books too readily. The travels are presented effectively - I disagree with the reviewer who found the chronology confusing.
Thesiger's professed celibacy is honestly questioned - I disagree with the reviewer who feels that Maitland tiptoes round this. The fact that Thesiger grumbled about becoming impotent at 70 says enough, and though the prediliction for handsome Arab teenaged boys is evident, there is also the comment to Eric Newby which used the word "pansy" as an insult. Do we really want the details?
Thesiger was the last of his kind. His tragedy was that he knew it and that his explorations hastened the intrusion of the modern world which he deprecated. This book is a very fair assessment of a fascinating life. Not the least fascinating aspect was the fact that while Thesiger wrote a shoal of articles in his first fifty years, his first book was written at the age of 49, and eight of the eleven were written (or dictated when his eyesight failed) after the age of 77. Would that we could all enjoy such a fruitful old age after such an active life.

An erudite and important book
Much has been written about Sir Wilfred Thesiger, the 'last great Victorian explorer' as he is often called. Most people who talk and write about him never really get under the skin of the man. They write about his journeys or even about themselves recreating them -- which to Thesiger himself was nothing more than a meaningless penance. Alexander Maitland's book is an immensely valuable work because it is written by someone who was at Thesiger's right hand for decades. Maitland is the first person to write accurately about Wilfred Thesiger who really understood him. There is new material and there are sharp insights -- most notably arising from Thesiger's letters with his mother. But for my money, the great charm of the book is in that Maitland is on the same wavelength as Thesiger himself. If Thesiger ever had a Boswell in the way that Johnson did, it is Alexander Maitland, and his great contribution to our real understanding of this towering figure of exploration, is this important book.