The end of adventure
The death of Wilfred Thesiger marks the passing of an era of explorers who journeyed into the unknown armed only with their wits and plenty of pluck. In these extracts from his recent autobiography, he explains what drove him on

I remember sitting beside my father in the twilight above a gorge, hoping he would get a shot at a leopard; I remember looking for bloodstains and cartridge cases near a small bridge where there had been a fight; listening to my father as he read to me of big game hunting and ox wagons and Zulus, from Jock of the Bushveld, as the sun went down behind Wochercher; watching in shocked disbelief the lance head come out through the shoulder of our favourite sowar when he had an accident getting on his horse, his grey face and closed eyes as I sat miserably beside him after my brother Brian had galloped off for help. He had dismounted to show us a bird's nest. I can see again the white-robed priests dancing in line before the Ark of the Covenant to the beat of silver drums, surrounded by other priests in richly-coloured robes, holding silver crosses in their hands.

Above all I can remember some of the events during the rebellion of 1916 when Lij Yasu was deposed: watching the armies going forth to fight, a seemingly chaotic flood of warriors, mounted and on foot; jostling women driving mules inexorably northward; overhearing the news that Ras Lul Seged's army had been wiped out and that Negus Michael, Lij Yasul's father and king of the north, was advancing on Addis Ababa; seeing Ras Tafari, later to become Haile Selassie, walk up the legation steps when he brought his infant son to my father for safekeeping, before he went north to give final battle; hearing the mass rifle-fire in the town, celebrating the news of overwhelming victory.
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Meeting Thesiger in Piccadilly and the Hindu Kush
Fellow traveller Eric Newby recalls his encounters with the great Wilfred Thesiger

Wilfred Thesiger

Wild at heart
Born in Ethiopia, educated at Eton and Oxford, he fought with the SAS and went on to become one of the great travel writers of the last century. Now in his 90s, a passionate advocate of the world's tribespeople, he is still at work. Jonathan Glancey reports