Wilfred Thesiger

Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, CBE, DSO, FRAS (3 June, 1910 - August 24, 2003) was a British explorer, travel writer and special forces operative, born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Frank Gardner

BBC journalist Frank Gardner cites a meeting with the Arabian explorer and Sir Wilfred Thesiger in his youth, which led to a life of fascination with the Arab world and a degree in the Arabic language from University of Exeter. 'But there was something about [his] journeys that fascinated me', wrote Gardner. 'I resolved to learn Arabic and study Islam at university,'

Gardner and his mother were on a London bus when they had bumped into Thesiger, an old friend of hers. "They had known each other briefly in the 1950s; in fact my mother even suspected his mother of trying to pair them off at one stage, but Thesiger was not the marrying kind"

They went to have tea with him, and the young man was entranced and resolved to become an Arabist. Thesiger was, though, more than just a writer/explorer. In the war he had fought with Orde Wingate in East Africa and had won a DSO, as had Wingate; worked for the Special Operations Executive in the Middle East; fought with David Stirling’s newly formed SAS regiment; and, after the war, continued to carry out the occasional special operation for the British in the region up to the 1960s... Frank maintained the mentored relationship with Thesiger until the old man’s death.

Connections

• Frank Gardner, BBC journalist | Orde Wingate | Special Operations Executive

Resources

• Wikipedia Wilfred Thesiger
• Michael Asher 'Sir Wilfred Thesiger Explorer whose mystic vision rejected the modern technological world in favour of the tribes people of Africa and the Arabian deserts' The Guardian, Wednesday 27 August 2003 17.06 BST