Exploring the World

A one-volume history of exploration told through the stories of the Royal Geographical Society's remarkable gold-medal winners

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Nearly all of the men and women covered are worthy of a book in their own right, and many of the big names are here: Richard Burton, David Livingstone, Colonel Percy Fawcett, Alfred Russel Wallace, Eric Shipton, Gertrude Bell and Dame Freya Stark. What emerges as the tales layer up is the inspiring singularity of so many of these intrepid individuals. They aren't all high-achieving head girl/boy types, but instead come across as often unconventional and intractable, occasionally irrational, but nearly always resolute, even in their aberrance * GEOGRAPHICAL *
Bristling with heroic tales of indomitable characters forcing their way in impossible circumstances through forests, overmountains and across deserts in search of a better understanding of this world . . . as a busy person's eyebrow-raising page-turner, this book is hard to beat * COUNTRY LIFE *
A model biography of the explorer . . . Maitland has separated reality from legend . . . Meticulous research is illuminated by Maitland's evocations of Thesiger's affinity with a world characterised by desert romance * Sunday Telegraph on WILFRED THESIGER *
A worthy testament to an exceptional life * Independent on Sunday on WILFRED THESIGER *
Masterly * The Times on WILFRED THESIGER *
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 on WILFRED THESIGER *
This thorough biography will be fascinating to Thesiger aficionados * Mail on Sunday on WILFRED THESIGER *
Maitland has done justice to an extraordinary subject * Scotsman on WILFRED THESIGER *
In this important biography of one of England's great legendary figures, Wilfred Thesiger's life and works are analysed in minute detail . . . it reads like an adventure story * Country Life on WILFRED THESIGER *