|
by: Wilfred Thesiger
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780002161947
ISBN: 000216194X
Label: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: May 05, 1987
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Sales Rank: 949428
Studio: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Related Items:
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A summary of an incredible life
Wilfred Thesiger was the scion of a very influential English family; his uncle was the Viceroy of India, that is the highest British official governing what it is now India, Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh.
Thesiger was born in Addis Abeba where his father was with the British legation; some of his earliest memories were of the German-inspired revolt during the first world war being put down. After boarding school and Oxford, he decided to spend his life exploring the most remote parts ... Read More
Rating: - Do such men walk among us today?
Wilfred Thesiger, I'm ashamed to admit, is a new discovery to me. After reading "Arabian Sands" a few days ago, I felt I had to learn more of his life. "The Life of My Choice" has many parallels to "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and was so captivating that I had to read it in one sitting. T.E. Lawrence noted that "self-knowledge unfitted me for leadership." Thesiger puts that same sharp sword of introspection to his life. His observations on Lieutenant Colonel Orde Wingate and his thoughts on T.E. Lawrence ... Read More
Rating: - A great choice
It was his choice. No marriage. Just adventure. It couldn't be mine. Yet one can be envious. Grant him his choice, and it's a great story. Grant him also that he's added something valuable to our better understanding of some important parts of the world that aren't so often understood. This is not the first book he wrote. He's a unique and remarkable man and author, a writer who grabs your interest and whisks you through several hundred pages. Books don't get much better than this.
Rating:  - An old man's memoir of a young man's freedom
Thesiger's "Life" has the primary benefit of any well-written story by a not-quite-native person who was privileged to be accepted in a strange land -- it takes you someplace new and mysterious. On that basis, I found the book to be very good, an insider view of a place, culture, and terrain I'll never experience myself. As with so many wandering sons of the British Empire, such as T. E. Lawrence and Sir Richard Burton, you get a good feel for the place and time, albeit inevitably filtered through the ... Read More
Rating:  - A bold life and true
This describes briefly his early years in Abyssinia (today Ethiopia and Eritria), followed even more briefly by his schooling in England, before it gets to the juicy stuff, in the form of his friendship with Haile Selassi, his explorations of the least well known corners of North Africa and Arabia, his service in the Sudan and in WW2 in the SAS. I think he's still alive, as I read an account of an interview of his a couple of years ago (1997 or so) and he was still going strong then. Until a few years ... Read More
|
